


Spectral Thief

by cinereous



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Dubious Consent, Erotica, Exhibitionism, Horror, M/M, Masturbation, Pre-Phantom Thieves, Selfcest, Spiders, light gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:55:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23625712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinereous/pseuds/cinereous
Summary: The attic above Leblanc was dirty and uninviting, cloaked in shadows and dust. And yet, it was now the only place Akira had to call home.It would have been just another in the long list of punishments he'd been made to endure, no better or worse than the rest, if it weren't for the fact that the attic already had an occupant.In the darkness, something watched.
Relationships: Akira Kurusu/Joker
Comments: 40
Kudos: 141
Collections: Dick or Treat - Scrohto Region





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for [Dick or Treat 2020](https://dick-or-treat.dreamwidth.org/)! Please go check it out! This story was beta read by [habenaria_radiata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/habenaria_radiata/profile) who is an absolute queen.

Akira has done a lot of things in his life that were scary. He went across monkey bars wet from rain and launched himself from swings already high in the air just to feel the rush of wind and the sting of his feet as he landed. He has jumped from buildings that felt too high and broken into the school in the dead of night when things were too dark and exit signs burned from the shadows. He played with knives, put himself in fist fights that didn't involve him, and danced when people were watching.

Fear was an abstract concept to him. It was a thing; an object. And for Akira, it was an object of desire, and something he flirted with shamelessly.

Perhaps it was that feeling he was chasing when he heard the woman struggling. He had been walking home late after his gymnastics class had run over. He still remembered the night well. The sky was dark and heavy with incoming rain, and the city had been plunged into a surreal dimness that made sunset oddly green tinted like a horror film backdrop.

It hadn't mattered that his legs were sore or that his home was the opposite direction. His heart was racing beating _thundering_ against his chest as he ran over. Several things flashed through his mind. Concern. Anger. _Excitement._

As he arrived, the scene felt like a show; unreal and melodramatic, but it was happening too fast. There was no poignant slow motion in real life. Everything felt rushed. It was a surprise he saw the button from her shirt fall to the ground at all save that the streetlamp illuminated it mid-air. It felt like a warning.

She was so tiny. The man who loomed over her was obviously drunk, continuously trying to cage her with his body. He slumped and his arms moved limply with each of his movements, but the woman never seemed to stop moving. She was all nervous energy and squirms like a still-struggling mouse in a snake's maw.

It wasn't _right_.

She was in danger.

_I have to save her._

The closer he got to the couple, the more details he could make out. A nice suit. Not quite tailored, but it still fit well. Bald head. His shoes shined under the murky light spilling in from the window beside them. He could be any salaryman, though there wasn't a huge wealth of that sort in his hometown.

A sleepy fishing community had little need of men in suits. Especially ones like this.

A sharp shriek filled the air as the man pulled her hair, and that was enough for Akira. In the distance, he could hear police sirens, but it didn't matter. His heart was a rapid, impulsive thud against his ribs, and Akira barely noticed the sound of his bag hitting the pavement before he was lifting his arm with the hope of getting his attention. The man was getting agitated, and Akira would much rather take a punch than her.

It wasn't his business. Predatory men in dark streets were something to fear, as this woman knew well. Akira should have kept walking. He should have gone home. He should have kept to his own nice, safe normal, but the adrenaline tasted sharp and delightful on his tongue. 

The movement from him was enough to catch the man's attention. He watched him jerk around and stumble, his drunkenness making him wobble precariously. His arms pinwheeled wildly before he lost his balance, his head banging loudly and almost comically against the fence. His head _bounced_ with the impact.

The woman screamed and jumped, but Akira didn't have to look hard to see relief shaping her shoulders either. Her blouse was gaping, and he did his best to keep his eyes on her own to at least give her the illusion of modesty. When he smiled, she didn't do it back. She was too busy staring down at the man with her hands covering her mouth and her brows knit tightly.

The man wasn't moving. Akira's heart seemed to be moving through his body. The brash and unnerving thump moved as a loud roar to his ears, his hands not shaking when he looked down at them. Should they be? He could hear the woman behind him, her voice muffled into her hands as she chanted 'nonononono' like theme music to his latest mistake. The world spun.

If fear was an abstract object, that night it manifested as handcuffs. 

The night felt like a series of blinks after that. Real life was fast, after all. One moment he was staring unblinking while police officers tugged his arms too far from his body. It made the muscle connecting his arm to his chest twinge as it was stretched, and one of them smelled so heavily of cigarettes it made his nose burn.

The handcuffs were cold as ice and burned into his wrists. The sound they made as they were put on reminded Akira of teeth and locks, and strangely of the sensation that came with running a blade on a ribbon to make it curl. As the door closed behind him and Akira was left seated in the back of a police car, he kept thinking about ribbons and being shaped against your will. He thought a lot about the ones that didn't turn out right and had to be thrown away.

It felt like battery acid was pumping through his veins, turning his blood black instead of red. He watched through the dirty window, red and blue burning at his eyes to the point that even when he closed them he could see their ghost against the darkness.

By the time the car pulled away from the sidewalk, it had begun to rain like the weather had been waiting for a silent cue all along. 

The police car smelled like cigarettes, stale coffee, and wet metal. They didn't talk to him through the drive. They talked about the weather and bills and wives, but only to one another. Akira had ceased to exist entirely like the dull 'clang' of that man's head against the metal barrier had been a magical note that erased him.

Akira had done a lot of scary things in his life. He had flirted with fear. He had played hard to get.

The handcuffs bit into his hands with icy, metal teeth. He could practically hear laughter, and he had to wonder if the radio was on but too low to make out more than sounds. It whispered.

_Got you._

\--------------

Sitting in a police station was dull, but not boring. Akira had never felt adrenaline like that just from sitting in a chair for hours. He answered questions, but he could feel every word falling on deaf ears. The man writing down his testimony was eating some sort of pastry, and Akira could feel every wasted second of his story with each crumb and splotch of jam that landed on his paperwork.

The fluorescent lights buzzed low and all consuming in the background, making an itch dig into the base of his skull like something was burrowing. It smelled like stale coffee and even staler cigarettes underneath a chemical haze of bleach floor cleaner and flower scented air spray. 

All the while, the handcuffs bit and chewed into his wrists.

By the time his parents had arrived, Akira's ass had long gone numb from the hard wooden chair, and there were red rings around his wrists. He didn't feel like he was in his body. It felt like he watched from the ceiling, his parents demanding answers, but growing quieter and quieter through the officer's explanation.

They were completely silent by the time they left with him in tow. 

For the next several weeks, Akira felt like a capsized rowboat abandoned in a rushing river. He was driven through unknown and unforgiving waters as letters arrived letting him and his parents know about court dates and appearance requirements. He was slammed against rocks and drug heavily against the murky river bed, losing pieces of himself over time as his parents argued over the dinner table and took him out grudgingly to find a suit to wear for his 'trial'.

His classmates stared and whispered, the stories growing more and more unreasonable from one person's ear to another. In another time, Akira would have liked to play up the rumor that he had shanked a man in a dark back alley. He might have even embellished it a bit and added a spun up tale of espionage and blackmail to go with it.

Instead, Akira found himself silent as the grave, and on the day of his court hearing he felt dressed for one too. It was the drabbest black suit he could imagine. It was too short in the arms, exposing his fragile wrists, and too tight in the shoulders. He felt like he couldn't move right, like everything was wrong.

His lawyer 'gifted' him a pair of fake glasses with the explanation it would make him seem softer and less like a thug or a wild child. They couldn't do anything about his hair.

In the end, perhaps the glasses had worked. He was paraded before the court room like a deadly snake inside of a plastic box, but they took pity on him. He was a bright boy with great grades and lots of friends. He was too young for the system. Mistakes happen, but consequences should still be reinforced.

Akira could feel the knife scraping up his spine, hitting ridges, some unseen thumb pushing him pressing him holding him captive against it until the verdict was finally called.

A warning and probation.

He felt numb and full of static even amid his lawyer shaking his parents' hands over his head. The judge gave him a strange, meaningful nod from across the room, but Akira couldn't figure out what it was meant to say.

He felt shaped, but he had no idea if it was for the better or the worse, and no one would tell him.

He felt hole-ridden. He could practically feel the muddy banks on his skin when his mother hugged him. The hug wasn't as tight or as warm as it might be normally. It was short and unsatisfyingly lukewarm, but Akira still clung to it for comfort.

A month later, he found himself dropped off at a train station on the edge of Tokyo. His mother's hug this time was even shorter. His father's didn't exist. They talked about an old friend in the city named Sojiro and a school there that had the good grace to take in a criminal. He was lucky.

Lucky, Akira thinks, as a four-leaf clover plucked and shoved between the pages of a heavy book to wilt unseen and unthought about maybe.

The train wasn't very full, but there were handprints on the windows, and it felt stuffy and hard to breathe. Akira stared out, watching the darkness speed by beneath the ghost of his own reflection. He let his mind wonder.

As it always did when the eyes relaxed and fixed to a point, his reflection began to slowly morph into a hideous visage. Akira let it happen, idly watching his eyes disappear into gaping dark holes. Mottled, pale skin and insidious looking face lines hid his softer features from view like a veil. It always felt like a game, a dare given by himself, for himself to see how long he could endure it while his heart thumped against his ribcage.

He blinked, his eyes refocusing. His reflection sweetly blinked back unmarred before fading away to nothing as the light of the platform slid across the window instead. The train slowed to a stop allowing the occupants of the car to leisurely lurch into movement.

Akira stood up with the rest of the people spilling out of the car, and his eyes slid up to stare at the peeling, yellow warning sticker there above the door. It made his stomach clench, but he heeded it, stepping out into the station.

_WATCH YOUR STEP._

\--------------

  
Cafe Leblanc turned out to be a surprisingly nice establishment. Downstairs, at least. It smelled heavily of spices and coffee with an undercurrent of piney wood cleaner. The tv buzzed at a lulling volume, but otherwise the cafe was blissfully quiet even during the peak of the afternoon rush outside.

Sojiro seemed to match his shop. He was well put together and groomed, with a face that was so strangely interesting that Akira could likely look at him all day if the man did not make it more than obvious that he despised his presence there. Friend of a friend he might be, but he obviously had no fond feelings for a criminal beyond this modest hospitality.

All the same, he was kind enough to show him upstairs to his new living arrangement. The stairs groaned underfoot, and it was bizarre to feel as much as see the banister go from gleaming and inviting on the ground floor to rough and splinter filled at the top from lack of care.

The air grew more humid with every step until at last they both stood awkwardly in the attic with shared feelings of utter underwhelming despair. Akira could _feel_ Sojiro's frustration just to be in this space. Akira could assume that Sojiro only came up here to grab items once in a very blue moon, but avoided it otherwise.

Dust strangled him. It strangled everything. In fact, the floorboards looked frosted over with a heavy layer of it. The windows were closed, trapping all of it inside, and cobwebs draped over all the junk in a way that mimicked protective drop cloths.

The more Akira stared around the room, the more his heart sank. By the bed he could make out heavily damaged floorboards that warped and ripped up from the rest of the floor, threatening to give way under any sort of weight. The only lighting was a handful of dim, bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling, a particularly enthusiastic moth battering against one with a soft, hopeless 'tink' that filled their awkward silence.

"This is your room. I'll at least give you sheets for your bed."

 _At least_. The knife against his back felt like it scraped upwards, the dull, toothy sound of ribbon ridges pounding in his ears. His eyes ached and burned, and Akira hated that he knew it wasn't because of the dust.

"You look like you wanna say something," Sojiro continued, eyes as dispassionate and grey as a pothole in the dark, daring him to misstep. The threat was there. Say something, his gaze demanded. Any excuse to turn him away.

Akira rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling the stupid glasses he now never took off slip a little on his nose from sweat. It was so warm up here. Stifling, even.

"It's big," he finally murmured, voice soft. He hated how _meek_ it sounded.

Sojiro rubbed at his own neck this time, and Akira hoped it was because he hated how he sounded too. "It's on you to clean up the rest. I'll be leaving after I lock up each day. You'll be alone at night, but don't do anything stupid. I'll throw you out if you cause any trouble."

The dust felt more oppressive than ever at his words, and Akira caught sight of a spider out of the corner of his eye as it trundled along one of the ceiling beams. He couldn't seem to look away even when he heard Sojiro's tone change just a bit.

"Now then...I got the gist of your situation," he grumbled, voice taking on an almost bored tone with only the faintest inflection of care. "You protected some woman from a man forcing himself on her, he got injured, then sued you. Right?"

Hope fluttered uselessly in his chest, but as Sojiro continued he couldn't help but listen to the moth smash into the bulb again and again.

Tink. Tink. Tink. 

"That's what you get for sticking your nose in a matter between two adults. You did injure him, yeah?....And now that you've got a criminal record, you were expelled from your high school. The courts ordered you to transfer and move out here, which your parents also approved. In other words, they got rid of you for being a pain in the ass."

Tink. Tink. Tink.

Now Sojiro was smirking. His expression reminded Akira of an alley cat poised over a dead rat. The hope in his chest fluttered one last time before collapsing low in the pit of his belly to become something rotted and uncomfortable. It was obvious Sojiro had been building up to that barbed point, and Akira forced his gaze to his shoes to keep his glare a secret. His jaw was clenched so tight and hard that his teeth ached while Sojiro just kept talking.

"It's best you not talk about anything unnecessary. I am in the restaurant business, you know. Behave yourself for the year. If nothing happens, your probation will be lifted."

"A whole year..." he whispered, words as faint as he felt just at the thought that this attic would be his home for an entire year. A different flutter erupted in his chest now, but this one tasted familiar. It was the serrated wings of panicked terror.

"....What a waste of my Sunday..." Sojiro continued. "Your 'luggage' arrived earlier; I left them over there."

His 'luggage' deserved the quotations. It turned out to be nothing more than a water warped box on the floor. Knife-like emotions ripped at his insides, tearing him to shreds. He realized this box held all of his clothes and not much more inside. Not even the delivery service had handled him with any kind of care. It would not be his final indignity, but it was such a visual one that Akira hands balled into angry fists in his pockets.

Without anything resembling a farewell Sojiro turned on his heel and walked back downstairs, leaving Akira suddenly alone in this new place.

 _Tink_.

Akira looked up to watch the moth bang against the glass again just in time to witness it plummet to the floor. It landed right next to his shoe, stuttering desperately and creating the tiniest of snow angels in the dust before it finally went still.

The silence that followed was all the more oppressive for the loss, and Akira couldn't help but feel quiet rage engulf his chest as wet heat spilled past his lashes. He angrily looked up to curb any more from falling, happening to land his gaze on the spider. He had the strangest wish to rub away the tears in embarrassment, but steadfastly wore them while he stared down the pest. It stared back, and neither of them moved.

Akira lost the staring contest with a loud sniff, aggressively rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses. He hated crying. He felt exhausted already, but he reluctantly swallowed back every angry protest that had lodged in his throat. Instead, he turned to go looking around for cleaning items. The sooner he got started the better.

It was in the darker side of the attic that he found a mop and bucket leaning up against some boxes. As he bent down to collect them, a sensation like cold water suddenly sluiced through his clothes engulfed him. Abrupt, icy, and startling. Akira slammed back up to a stand so fast he almost lost his footing, his heart hammering in his chest as he looked around. It was dark, but he could see the outlines of box towers and forgotten furniture, but nothing...nothing that could account for that chill. 

Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his hand and outstretched it into the dark.

It was like hitting some unseen shade. He felt the humid air go chilled against his fingertips. It was more than a draft. It felt like air wafting off of ice. He stared harder into the darkness, willing his eyes to focus and cut out a shape that wasn't there. The darkness yawned back. Akira could almost imagine it as a large jungle cat licking its claws and twitching its tail, but remaining unmoved.

Akira walked slowly backwards, careful not to bump into anything. By the time he was on the other side of the staircase he had just managed to convince himself he was being foolish. Nothing moved save for himself, and Akira exhaled the breath he had kept trapped in his lungs. He was being ridiculous. 

A glance up proved the spider had vanished. Akira shuddered to imagine finding it on the window ledge or something later on. He distracted himself by opening the windows, finding that his heart rate relaxed to see the watery sunlight spill in. The sounds of people outside further lightened the oppressive atmosphere to the point it almost felt safe. Even still, as he began sweeping his eyes kept jumping over past the stairs.

It felt like the darkness watched back. 

\-----------------

  
Sojiro used lavender laundry soap. It might have been calming if the mattress hadn't been so damned _lumpy._

Akira stretched with a scowl, feeling his feet threaten to dangle off the end of the bed. His muscles ached from the sheer amount of cleaning he had done today. The floors were scrubbed within an inch of their life, no longer blanketed by dust. He had wiped every available surface, dusted the rafters and corners free of cobwebs, and rearranged as much of the junk as he could.

The new sheets were on the bed, and the cafe was silent down below after Sojiro had left a couple of hours ago. The only sounds in the attic at all were the ones wafting in from the window and the occasional groan of a pipe. It was an eerie place in the dark.

His thoughts felt like a tether. Before he could stop himself, Akira turned his head towards the stairs. The moonlight spilling in from the window didn't reach far. It cast a silvery rectangle along the floorboards, stretching and reaching, but falling very short of the inky shadow that swallowed the other half of the space.

He was reminded of the cold that had frightened him earlier. He didn't feel it now. The blankets were kicked off and to the side, leaving him unprotected. _Unprotected from what?_ he thought, frowning towards the shadows.

In the silence, his pulse felt too loud in his ears. The gentle, pulsing hum of it mixed with the buzz of a streetlamp somewhere close to his open window. The noises together started to sound eerily like breathing. Akira knew it wasn't. He knew the sounds. He could pick them apart and differentiate them.

But it still sounded like breathing. His heart rate quickened, causing the sound to grow worse. Adrenaline nipped at his edges, fraying him one bite at a time.

Underneath the pounding of his heart, he could hear it. If someone asked him about it later he would deny it. He would say that his mind was running away with itself, that he'd made it up to fit this odd narrative of fear and panic that was manifesting in his chest.

But Akira could hear footsteps. 

They were faint, far away. He would almost guess they were outside, someone walking by from the bar next door, but the sound was not of a shoe on the road or sidewalk. There was none of the gravel chew to it that he would expect, and it wasn't pitched from the window.

It was muffled, like stepping on cloth. Like stepping on thick dust. Underneath, he could hear the whiny groan of ancient wood.

His heart was thundering so hard and fast against his ribs now that he felt light headed. His fingers tingled with lack of blood, and Akira _stared_. His eyes stung from his lack of blinking, but he was too terrified to look away from that empty darkness across the way that seemed to sway and shift.

A pipe hissed somewhere down below, some mechanism in the refrigerator kicking into a hum, but Akira barely noticed. He was too busy staring down the _nothing_ that was sprawling and hiding behind the just barely identifiable shapes of a bicycle and shelving. He could feel eyes even if he could not see them, battery acid starting to leak into his veins. The only way out of the attic was to go nearer. It didn't even feel like an option.

That was when he saw it. 

His eyes narrowed, dilating and scrabbling to make out shape in the black. Akira knew it was just habit, just fear. His mind already processed there was nothing there. It was just after images and the movement of his eyes that caused him to feel like the darkness _moved_.

But then it _did_.

Akira inhaled, dizzy, as he could see a shape materialize and shift through the shelves. It was a shadow even darker than the dark around it. It stood of height to him and moved fluidly like a cloud or smoke or...nothing real at all.

The shadow spilled like ink closer to the stairs, graceful and predatory and inhuman. There was no definite shape to it, no hard lines. Humanoid...maybe, by a stretch. Fuck. He wasn't _breathing_. His chest hurt with the banging clamor of his heart, and he still had not _blinked_.

It coursed and writhed closer, inching nearer to the puddle of moonlight. Akira could feel cold sweat and dread filming over his entire body at the very _idea_ of this entity coming into the light. Would it illuminate further horror? Would this oil spill of a creature simply blot out the light on touch? 

Tears pricked at his eyes as they stung, begging to blink. Begging to shut against this nightmare.

A loud _CLANK_ made Akira scream, jerking on the bed and thrashing backwards until his shoulder blades banged sharply against the wall. He heard what sounded like a hiss and a terrifying, warped sort of sound he couldn't name. From the darkness came a streak, barreling right at him. Akira threw himself to the side on pure adrenaline fueled instinct as he watched the shape tear up on his bed and out the window, moonlight glinting across it. 

Fur.

A cat. It...it had been a cat.

Akira wrenched his gaze back to the other side of the room, but the feeling of oppressive, yawning nothing did not reach out to him. The shapes and movements from before were gone. The attic felt still and no longer full to the brim with tension.

His pulse still jabbed angrily in his neck and ears, reminding him to be on edge, to be wary, to be vigilant. And he did for awhile. Akira could not calm enough to lie back down. For several minutes he sat in the darkness and held his knees to his chest, every muscle in his body poised and ready to hurl himself out of the window just as the cat had. However, after a good fifteen minutes of talking himself down while his imagination warred and tried to spike him back up, he eventually felt exhaustion blanket and quiet his troubled mind.

He laid down slowly, and despite the heat of the night, Akira pulled the blankets over his body like a shield. It helped a bit to soothe him even with sweat prickling at his skin. His last thoughts were towards the cat and spiders and how well they saw in the dark.

His dreams were strange and fitful; tunnels with bare hanging bulbs and moths, ugly hulking creatures wearing masks. He wandered through the maze of them, ducking corners and plastering himself against the loose, fragrant soil of the walls. Eventually, he found a tunnel with broken bulbs, glass winking faintly on the ground.

From the darkness burned blue flames that shed no light, a wicked flash of red making him jump back and stumble, falling.  
Akira jerked against the mattress. His eyes slammed open.

The attic greeted him, lit with buttery morning light. The open window filtered in sounds of talking and birdsong as well as a balmy tickle of breeze that was sweet, but promised heat later.

His eyes went straight to the area past the stairs. It was lit up well enough, still dim, but there was no mistaking it was empty of any moving shadows or people or cats. 

As his eyes traveled back along the room, however, Akira felt his brows slowly come together to knit tightly. The floors had been gleaming when he went to bed that evening, but during the night a fine layer of dust had settled over the wood all over again. He'd never seen a place grow dirty so quickly in his life, but what truly had his blood freezing in his veins was not the slapdash little cat pawprints through the grime, but the boot prints he saw leading right up to his bed.

_Like footsteps muffled in dust._

"Kid! Get up. We're going to your school to talk with the principal. Fifteen minutes!"

Akira jolted at Sojiro's words, but his eyes never left the footprints. His skin felt too tight and too sensitive. He had the strangest feeling...like if he got up out of the bed he would die. 

The hush of his sock clad feet on the floor did nothing. He changed slowly, poised, ready to run the whole time until he was dressed. Nothing jumped out at him. Nothing moved at all beyond the cheery dust motes winking in and out near the window. Akira slowly walked over to the stairs where he had left his bag. He lifted it and slid it onto his shoulder, still eyeing the room with distrust.

From the stairway he could hear the sounds of a newspaper crinkling and the soft murmur of the tv. Some sort of toy advertisement was playing, and Akira listened with half an ear as he twisted a piece of his hair between his fingers while staring into the jumbled mess of the attic. The commercial was typical. Action figure probably. He could make out words like karate-chop action and real shooting gun. It was oddly comforting.

_"...you'll be ready to take back the night!"_

The tv cuts off suddenly, the crinkle of newspaper rattling with an irritated edge now. Akira cast one final glance before he hurried down the stairs.

"About time. We're taking my car. Let's go."

Akira was grateful his stomach was in knots. It helped him forget that he was starving.


	2. Chapter 2

  
Shujin turned out to be a fresh sort of hell. It was bright and clean, splashed here and there with vibrant notes of red that normally would have pleased him, but in his current mood it just made him feel vaguely uncomfortable.

It wasn't necessarily bustling with people given it was Sunday, but a handful of staff was around. It felt muggy inside the building, the air hot and clinging like a greenhouse in the hallways. The scent of sweat and cheap perfume was cloying and made his head hurt as he walked unhappily at Sojiro's back.

The heat was the only explanation Akira could have for the principal.

Principal Kobayakawa was a very large man comprised entirely of neck. His tan suit wore yellow and gave his skin a sallow tone, and his beady black eyes made Akira think of birds ruffled and hunkered over abandoned french fries, the crazed look of fight or flight bleeding out darkly amid vacancy.

Akira didn't even want to be in the same room with him. His aftershave was too strong and his yolky head glistened with perspiration. When he spoke his voice was strong enough, but between each sentence he gave a gasping sort of inhale as if he couldn't get enough air. 

He couldn't quite place what made Kobayakawa so _ugly_ , until it hit him like a ton of bricks. His ears. He was all greasy, shiny, pudgy skin and his ears looked haphazardly glued on. They seemed too low and too near his eyes for all of his head's size, and for a moment Akira could not help but wonder if this waxen, damp lump in a suit before him was simply not human.

The woman standing at his side was oddly demure, and it did not help Akira feel more at ease. Everything felt strange about this as he and Sojiro and this nameless teacher were all kept standing around his desk while Kobayakawa huffed and blustered at him in the same tone one might use to lecture a puppy.

The woman was finally introduced, and Akira felt oddly relieved to see her eyes as she looked up. Kawakami was a slight woman, and Akira warmed with sudden camaraderie to see her curly hair like his own. There was something about the frumpy clothes on top of such a thin frame that made her seem fragile, or maybe it was her eyes.

She had thin, barely there eyelashes that did nothing but make her eyes seem wider and somehow discomforting. Or perhaps it was just the way she spoke.

"And, if by chance you cause any problems," she said. "I won't be able to protect you at all."

Protect him. From himself? Akira frowned gently, looking away from her towards his feet, trying to ignore how suffocatingly hot it was in this office.

"...He is responsible for all his actions," the principal summarized, leaving Kawakami to oddly jump into complaints about being the one to be over him. The soft flicker of hope in his chest that had ignited over the idea of one adult looking out for him wavered and snuffed out into smoke. Akira was sure he could choke on his disappointment.

Her soft and vulnerably open features seemed to shift in her new mood. Her expression grew pinched and oddly unflattering, and she seemed to speak out of the corner of her mouth in a way that wasn't _right_. 

The adults spoke around him, about him, like he wasn't there at all. Akira listened as they discussed how in line they needed to keep him, like he was some sort of wild animal gnashing his teeth and hurling himself against his prison bars.

It was still so fucking hot.

Akira wanted to leave. He wanted to get out of this office and away from these adults. His mind rushed to the evening before and how cold that spot had been that he walked into. Even despite the nausea of fear that swamped him, he wanted to be standing in it again. He wanted that sickly cold that gripped his bones instead of this heat that dug careless fingers under his clothes.

In the hallway on the way out Sojiro stopped, but didn't bother to turn around, leaving Akira to look at the feeble line of his shoulders instead of his face. It felt unaccountably rude. Enough so that he felt his teeth grind together on instinct, a bead of sweat sliding down his neck.

"They're treating you like some kinda nuisance...I guess that's what it means to have a criminal record," he murmured, slowly turning just enough to make eye contact, but even then he kept his body folded away from Akira as if he were afraid he might lunge out. "Turns out your past follows you wherever you go."

It was true. Akira could not argue it, but it felt comforting to hear someone else say it in that tone. Someone else noticed it was unjust. But just like with Kawakami, his soft, candle dim hope was blotted out before it had a chance to burn higher.

"By the way...if you get expelled now, I won't hesitate to kick you out. Got it?"

It was the suffocating heat in this school that made his chest feel like this, aching and tight and crawling up his throat. It explained all of it but the faint burn in his eyes as he nodded his understanding under the anger and disgust in Sojiro's gaze. The shiny linoleum under his feet felt as stable as a rug thrown over a sinkhole.

The whole car ride was more of the same. Sojiro filled the silence with nothing but talking down to him. He poked verbal needles into his skin, and if he noticed Akira sitting there in hot faced, glassy-eyed silence he didn't let on. The stabs kept coming for as long as the traffic didn't move to the point Akira almost fled the car when they finally arrived back at Leblanc.

And then suddenly he was alone in the attic once again. This time it almost felt like a blessing to be there. The dust on the floor was heavier than this morning, and the boot prints he'd seen were gone. So were the cat pawprints. As he sat on the edge of his bed he watched dust motes wink in and out of existence like fireflies. It was the only thing that had given him any contentment today.

He wanted to burst into angry tears. He wanted to shove his heel down against the broken and warped floorboards nearby until they splintered. He wanted to scream.

He wanted to stop feeling afraid.

Akira looked up slowly at that last thought, dark eyes zeroing in on the half of the attic beyond the stairs. It was sunset out by now, and Akira was reminded by an angry growl of his stomach that he hadn't eaten at all today. Sojiro hadn't even asked, and had threatened him not to touch anything downstairs.

Fueled by anger, Akira jerked up to his feet, stomping across the space with satisfying thuds of his shoes until he was crossing the invisible barrier dividing this room in half his mind had set. The moment he passed the bannister, he felt the air change.

It was not warm on this side. Instead, that bone deep chill settled over him, and his footsteps grew muffled and quiet to his ears. The dust was heavy here. Akira's hands shook as he did a slow circle, staring around at the space that looked for all the world like nothing spectacular at all. But it could not explain the low hum settling inside his chest that made all the hair along his back and neck stand on end.

His stomach groaned in hunger, and it startled him when a pipe in the floor groaned back as if in answer. It was enough to break the odd tension. Akira snorted loudly at his jumpiness, scrubbing his palm against his face and grimacing at the cold sweat he found there.

It was going to be a long night. He never did sleep well on an empty stomach.

  
\---------------

  
As he had predicted, the grinding stones of hunger kept him hovering just above sleep. Akira felt lightheaded and full to bursting with agitation as the gnawing emptiness of his stomach seemed to chew hollows throughout the rest of his body in spite.

His lungs felt too large and too empty, causing every breath to leave him as a sigh. Every heartbeat was a distracting thud against his ribs. Every blink felt like a slow eternity. Akira hovered just above the consuming ocean of sleep, but he could do nothing more than wet his fingers in it.

It was in this glassy-eyed, heavy limbed silence that the temperature began to drop. It was such a slow and subtle change that Akira did not notice at all at first. He lay spread-eagled and lethargic in only his pajama bottoms, staring up at the rafters counting cobwebs and twisted nails like one would count sheep.

The chill crept along his skin like frost covered vines, licking gooseflesh into life in its wake. His toes and fingers began to ease into fumbling numbness, and a bone deep ache settled into him so quietly Akira simply felt heavy.

But then, all at once, Akira realized. A small shift of the cold air rushed along his chest, and it was enough he jerked. His feverish exhaustion blasted into knife sharp awareness in a split second as Akira sat up on his elbows. His gaze magnetically snapped over to the dark side of the attic without pause.

The previously sleepy lull of his heart pounded up to a painful drum beat against his ribs. Now that he was wise to the change, Akira could feel the deep, sharp cold in his lungs like knives. His next breath left him in an icy plume of white. Terror squeezed at his heart like barbed wire.

In the darkness across the way, Akira watched in horror as the shadows grew deeper, yawning into a nameless nothing. The color of it was more vivid than black and gaped between boxes and the outlines of junk menacingly. That darkness seeped and shifted, bleeding around corners and shelves until that same strangely humanoid-but-not _thing_ teased at the edge of the stairs and the reach of his own imperfect vision.

Were it not for the cold and for the charge to the air making his hair stand on end, Akira would assume his eyes were playing tricks on him. It was just formless enough, just enough shadow and feathered edges to be nothing more than his imagination.

But his imagination _moved_.

The soft nell of boots on dust muffled wood sounded through the attic. Floorboards groaned and squeaked under unseen weight. Akira didn't blink, didn't breathe. His eyes stung, but he did not look away from the dark shape. The sound of his heartbeat in his ears and the lamp buzzing outside slid into the now familiar silvery murmur of whispers too quiet to discern. 

He made out only one word as the whispers bit into his ear with all of the force of silk.

" _Mine_."

Invisible ice roared down his throat causing Akira to gasp and start to fight. It wasn't painful. His only thought was that it seemed like it should hurt. It should feel like ice crystals and spikes and burning. It only made him feel cold and numb, but Akira knew without a shadow of doubt that he could not cry out for help. 

A phantom force knocked into him, forcing him onto his back with a frosty gasp that clouded the air. He was immediately poised to get up, prepared to flail and kick at whatever appeared before him.

But nothing did.

It felt like fingers on his arms, and the next second his wrists were shoved down into the blankets on either side of his head. Akira tried to cry out, but the only sound that left him was a choked gasp. He wasn't sure who he'd even cry out to. The cafe was empty and no one on the street below would be able to come to his aid.

That feeling of complete aloneness struck him like a punch, and Akira felt the first trickle of true fear slither down into his stomach.

Even now, prone and with his nose burning very tellingly, he could not see his assailant. There was no one poised over him, for all that he could feel the hands digging his wrists down into the mattress. There was no weight, no body heat, no shadow, no sound, no fucking _anything_.

The nothing echoed around him in a way that was somehow more terrifying than if a person was here holding him down. A person had weak spots to exploit. A person could feel pain. Out of desperation, Akira kicked out a leg violently and his foot connected with nothing at all before falling back onto the sheets. 

Not for the first time, Akira regretted his lack of blankets during these warmer months. Held down in the dark, bathed in moonlight, he felt incredibly exposed and vulnerable. His mind ran wild with images of his stomach suddenly blooming with blood from magically appearing slices. He imagined a monster-like hand sliding over the side of the mattress to reach for his legs.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins bitter and painful like bile, his chest rising and falling fast enough he felt light headed in his anxiety. There was no longer any denying that there was something horrible lurking in the shadows of this attic...and he had missed his opportunity to run.

".. _.free_..." the whispers crooned among the murmured jumble. Akira had no idea what it meant or if he misheard it entirely. Was he making it up, looking to hear words? To communicate?

To plead?

To understand?

He opened his mouth to speak again, but the chill in his throat stopped any actual sounds beyond his gasping breaths and tiny cracked sounds of anxiety.

When he felt the waistband of his pajama bottoms start to slide down his hips Akira tried to scream, but the sound that left him was a broken, inhuman noise like a whine scraping through a grater. He jerked and slammed his legs, fighting against this unseen predator as violently as he could manage. He flailed and squirmed and strained against his bonds, but the slow drag of his pajama bottoms was as sure and inevitable as the hot trail of tears that now dripped down his temples and into his hair.

The cold air nipped at his now bare legs, and Akira felt unfairly ashamed and embarrassed to look down and see his naked crotch shadowed and lewd in the moonlight spilling in from the window. He couldn’t cover himself or turn over to hide. He couldn’t do _anything_ to protect his modesty.

Anger poured like boiling water down his chest, and Akira went still there on his back. His jaw clenched hard enough to ache as he glared wetly up into the cobweb covered rafters. Every line of his body felt like a poised middle finger.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he growled, fingers clenching into claws even while he kept straining against the barrier at his wrists. His words were a lie as large and obvious as an elephant in the room, but he kept his voice steady and sharp all the same.

A second later it hit him like a ton of bricks that he’d been able to _speak_. The freezing cold sensation in his throat had receded. He could scream for help. 

Seconds tick by. Akira didn’t.

Instead, he stared around, looking for that humanoid shape, for the sound of boots. He was utterly frozen by now, his skin a solid expanse of gooseflesh. For this reason, Akira felt shock down to his toes when a feather soft sensation ghosted along his cock. His body seemed to bloom with easy heat low in his stomach and high on his cheeks instantaneously.

“Stop!” he pleaded, squirming on the sheets as if he could somehow sink right into them and disappear. The ghostly fingertips did not stop, but they shifted, sliding up his hip and further along his stomach. 

He couldn’t see the touch, but he could practically track it like his eyes could. For some reason he imagined red gloved fingertips that splayed wide and graceful and fluid along the pale expanse of his chest.

Those fingers gently clasped at his throat, cold and barely there just like the odd patch of chilled air he’d found while cleaning. It sank into his blood on contact, making him ache, and he could only liken it to the cold of winter seeping through frosted window panes and sweaters. It was pervasive and silent and potentially deadly.

The jumbled up whispers and murmurs grew around him, silvery and burbling, hissing like a brook of snakes and wind.

However, it was a voice that poured into his ear.

_“You haven’t lost your voice yet. Good. Don’t let them take it.”_

The clasp of his wrists and the oppressive buzz of nothingness retreated along with the cold. Akira laid there on the bed without moving, his chest rising and falling with quiet panic. His blood was still rushing in his ears, but the sound was wholly different. It felt more simple...more normal. He knew without a single drop of doubt that, whatever the presence was, it had left him. For now.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Akira sat up in bed. Other noises reached him now that the vacuum had passed. There was music from the bar. A dog barked. A pipe gurgled in the floorboards. 

And in the dark behind the stairs shadows yawned and licked their claws, but he could practically feel the purr of contentment.

Akira practically ripped his pajamas in his hurry to yank them back on, and in what felt like two strides, he was across the room and turning on the light. The bare bulb winked into grungy, tired life. The world felt fake and plastic under its golden burn, but the shadows were driven further back into meager corners.

It was enough.

His knees wobbled precariously until Akira made it to his bed, collapsing into a sit and staring at the other side of the attic in silent fear and challenge.

His stomach growled and gnashed at him, and the heat began to itch at his skin like the cold had never been there in the first place. Outside, he could hear a drunken man in the streets talking loudly with his far more sober friend.

"I’m telling you! It’s haunted! Saw a ghost. Saw it with my own two eyes!"

It was almost ridiculous. Despite his utter terror and the frantic flutter of his heart in his chest, Akira found that a tiny smile was teasing at his lips. The man kept going, obviously losing his train of thought mid-story while his friends ambled him along the road.

Oddly, he found himself straining his ears to hear more, desperate to hear what this very drunk and slovenly man had done in his predicament. What did you do when you had ghosts? What did you do when those ghosts violated not just your safety, but your body?

The story the man was rattling off sounded familiar. Akira thought he’d heard this same tale somewhere before. A ghost hunting show perhaps? Vague plot points and events lined up in his mind, but the pieces were fleeting and falling away along with the sounds of the men as they headed further and further down the road. He wanted so desperately for the men to stay, to keep his mind focused on this ridiculous story rather than his own real life experience.

What had happened tonight...was unthinkable. He couldn’t sleep again even if he had wanted to. Restrained, naked, muted, alone in the fucking world except for some creature he could not name or see.

A creature that had curiously backed away and paced at the edge of his overactive imagination instead. The man talked and stumbled in the distance, coloring his unease with strange comedy. Akira gripped his fingers into fists against his knees and tried not to run away screaming. And whatever his attacker was...it bided its time.

The men’s voices were quiet now, leaving Akira to wonder if they were gone. The ghost story remained foggy and disjointed in his brain like the dust on the floor, but he tiredly did his best to put them in order anyway just to focus on something mundane. His head swam with dizziness.

“...do you ever wonder what ghosts want?…” he heard from what felt like a million miles away, a slurred voice in the wind that was too comforting if only as a reminder he wasn’t alone with the attic just yet. Akira rubbed at the drying tear tracks on his face and sighed deeply. Perhaps, in time, he’d forget what feeling normal felt like.

He couldn’t help but remember what the monster had said to him though. _Don’t let them take it_. It was enough he glared across the room.

“I don’t know what you are...but I know you’re a hypocrite,” he spat, staring and sure he would not sleep tonight.

\---------------

Monday dawned grey and hazy. Akira sat on the edge of his bed in full uniform. His head felt fuzzy and full of the dust freshly coating the floor. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep again after the events last night. Here, now, in the light of morning, it felt like it had all been a dream.

The rafters seemed to hang lower and darker in this glum daylight, reminding Akira of the same rain clouds that were swelling over the city. They felt fitting for his rather abysmal mood.

The school uniform he had been issued was nicer than his own back home. Akira was actually rather fond of the fitted plaid pants and blazer, though here in the muggy heat of the attic, the turtleneck stifled him. The thick cotton hugged his throat like a noose.

Today was his first day of classes, and Akira’s mind was already recalling how he’d felt in the school yesterday. Kawakami with her deceitful false kindness would be there. He couldn’t help but wonder if she would crush him just as easily with her doe-eyed stare that turned ugly in a single glance as she had yesterday.

Akira’s sigh was deep as he listened to the little plastic sounds of the nearby dropcloth where it rustled with the breeze over the desk. Out of the corner of his eye it looked ghostly and unsettling, making memories of last night’s terror swarm him no matter how hard he tried to tamp them down. Somewhere down on the street a child was crying.

He didn’t want to be late.

It felt like some kind of omen to walk over to the stairs only to find a large, spindly sort of spider perched on his bag. He almost missed it, arm outstretched for the leather strap and left hanging in midair. Akira stared at the spider, and it stared back. How many eyes did spiders have? He felt like he had read about it once, but every one of those tiny black orbs felt like they were on him; beady and unblinking, each reflecting back a tiny, imperfect image of his pensive expression.

Akira grabbed a random object nearby, which turned out to be a rusted and forgotten can of spray paint, using it to gently nudge the spider off until he could finally sling the strap over his shoulder. When he glanced back over, the spider was gone.

Perhaps the world felt sorry for him after his ordeal. Downstairs in the cafe Sojiro offered him breakfast, which turned out to be curry. Akira didn’t even have the luxury to be disappointed. He was starving by this point and scarfed it down so fast his stomach hurt afterwards. Feeling full again after nothing yesterday was worth the discomfort, especially since he had no way of knowing how long Sojiro’s kindness would last.

It was becoming unnerving how often adults seemed to understand him or feel concern for him, only to betray the sliver of trust they had garnered in the next moment. It was like the knife at his back did not leave to give him rest, but to simply return back sharper than before.

Outside the shop, the streets felt more narrow than the day before. Everything held the same grey tinge from the overhanging clouds. The music and frivolity of the night atmosphere was gone, replaced by somber tiredness and scowls on every face he passed.

People all blended together as Akira walked by them. For brief moments he forgot to notice faces, having to glance back to verify that, yes, the person had a face and not a nondescript smudge that he would forget.

There were others who stood out, but they felt...aggressive. Often they would toss out complaints and rude comments, peppering his walk to the station with unease that curdled the spices in his gut.

His only solace was the subway. In the train everyone ignored everyone else when stuffed so close together. By the time Akira finally reached the last station, he was dizzy with his lack of sleep and queasy from the heat of his breakfast mixed with so many nerves. 

His luck continued on in the same vein when he got up to street level only to be met with rain that speckled his glasses and trickled cold fingers through his hair and under his collar. It took some effort to focus on his phone and protect it from the rain at the same time, but eventually Akira made it to the school.

He was soaked and freezing, five minutes late after getting lost. 

The inside of the school was unnervingly bright when it was so dull and dark outside the windows. It made the fluorescent lighting color the world cartoonish and otherworldly and also made his eyes feel heavier and wider at once. 

A tall, muscular man in jogging pants stood nearby. Akira found himself surprised and oddly warmed to see his curly hair. It was the same odd comradery he had felt for Kawakami yesterday. It could not explain the tension he feels while staring at this man’s back, however. It made no sense, this unease, but it filled him slowly like the murky rainwater gathering into puddles outside.

As the man turned around to face him, Akira felt rooted to the spot. Out of place feelings swarmed him as he took him in. Curly hair like his own, but the curls were tighter and oddly styled. His eyes were dark and oddly vacant just like the principal and Kawakami’s. His chin was the showstopper though. Akira had never seen a person with a chin so large in his life, like some sort of superhero caricature. He was still staring dumbfounded when the man began to speak.

“You’re that new transfer student, correct? You’re late, you know,” he greeted, looking strangely inviting. Akira felt awkwardly afraid of him, not sure if it was the general feeling of unease in the air or if it was the sheer shock of an adult being kind to him. “...well, I’ll overlook this just for today.”

Akira’s heart squeezed with warmth. He wanted to do something as stupid as rush up to whoever this strange man was and thank him. Kindness felt like a balm across the scars littering his insides, but all Akira could bring himself to do was clench his fingers tighter around his bag and nod with deep respect.

And just like that, the man changed.

His features lifted and cinched in tightly, brows knit into a harsh, angry angle, and his mouth managed to show too many teeth beneath a disgusted curled lip. Akira’s mind slammed into yesterday in that boiling hot office while he watched the sweet, doe-like features of Kawakami twist and curl into something ugly.

The soothing balm in his chest hissed and turned to smoking poison in an instant.

“I’m sure you’ve heard from the principal, but cause any trouble and you’ll be expelled. Understand?”

“I understand,” he murmured. What else could he possibly say? The threat of this man hung in the air like a cloud. He dared not antagonize him or even push his luck with explanations. Instead, he hung his head low and avoided the dark emptiness of his eyes that somehow felt more aggressive than the others had been.

“At any rate,” the man continued, voice suddenly snapping back to a pleasant tone out of nowhere. A glance up proved his face was rearranged back into a placid, almost dopey smile once again too. “Hurry up and go to the faculty office. I’m sure Ms. Kawakami’s tired of waiting. Good luck trying to enjoy your new school life!”

Trying. Good luck _trying_ to enjoy it. Alarms snarled in his head.

Akira watched the man walk away down the hall, and he couldn’t tell if the slickness of his palms was from rain or cold sweat in that moment. 

School turned out to be a nightmare. Akira found himself aching to be back in the attic in the dark with the monster instead of being forced to deal with this. Every student and member of faculty had something rude to say about him. 

_“Late on the first day, too? You like causing trouble for the school?”_

_“Do you even want to be reformed?”_

_“I hear he hides a bunch of dangerous stuff in his bag…”_

_“I heard that he’s a super problem child, and no other school will take him.”_

_“They really allow criminals into high school? I don’t want to go to school with someone like that.”_

On and on it went until Akira was absolutely certain he would blow a gasket and slam a desk over. Teachers called on him in their classes, and each time Akira could feel their intent to humiliate him. He was only so fortunate that he was apparently ahead and could answer the questions. 

Lunch was a solitary affair. Akira stayed at his desk and read, doing his best to ignore the gnawing of hunger when he had no money to pay for a meal or bread. The whispers never stopped, but at long last the school day ended, allowing Akira to walk outside into the world once again.

It was still overcast, but now the soft chill from the morning had given over to muggy humidity that made it hard to breathe. The sun desperately pried through the clouds to dapple small patches of warmth here and there that no one seemed to notice or appreciate.

Akira took his time walking to the station, pausing for a good ten minutes to watch a stray cat drink daintily from one of the few sun drenched puddles. Akira couldn’t help but wonder if this cat could be the one that had run from the attic that night. It had been dark, and there was no way to know what it had looked like. Akira assumed it was black, though he vaguely remembered some white blur too.

A girl laughed somewhere far away, and Akira watched the cat’s ears twitch up before it went darting away. The puddle rippled in its absence, and he watched his own reflection sway and slosh. The world thundered around him, but the moment felt surreal and disconnected from it like it had when he stared at his reflection in the train on the way here. His visage looked ugly and distorted, but eventually the water calmed enough it was just him staring back.

He looked awful. 

Akira hadn’t even looked in the mirror this morning, and he regretted it. His hair was a little more wild than usual, and his eyes were bruised and tired from lack of sleep. 

Eventually Akira stood back up and made his way to the subway. It was packed and his personal space was made inconsequential for a short while. When he arrived back at Leblanc, the world was getting darker, the wind picking up. Leaves fluttered by on the stiff breeze, and there was the taste of electricity in the air.

Two storms in one day could not be a good omen.

Akira let himself into the cafe and was met with Sojiro’s oddly long, stern face twisted into a scowl. It felt like the cold wind had followed him inside.

“Hey, I got an interesting call from your school today. It’s only your first day and you’re already showing up late?”

“I’m sorry. I got lo-”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone says,” Sojiro bit out, cutting him off mid-sentence. He didn’t mean to, but a frown slid across his lips. This wasn’t fair. Every single one of these adults won’t _listen_ to him. It was no wonder at all that he had stopped trying. 

“Look, just behave yourself. Your life’s forfeit if anything happens. You understand the meaning of probation, right?”

“...”

A pot on the stove behind them bubbled, filling the silence that was already full to the brim with resentment. Akira could taste the rust of nails on the tip of his tongue. He was dying to spit them at Sojiro’s feet, but all he did was swallow audibly around the lump of loathing in silence. The click of his throat was as loud as a gun’s hammer.

“Ok then.”

The overly cheerful jingle of Sojiro’s ringtone broke the tension, and Akira listened to him be nice and smile to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Akira wanted to tell them the truth of what Sojiro was like. He wanted to ruin at least one small thing for this man. More so than ever when the older man looked up and glared at him.

“Hey, what’re you standing around for? Go hurry on up to bed.”

Offense mixed like blood with the nails in his mouth. His heart beat frantically in his chest with a rhythm that drummed with self-righteous anger and howling screams left silent to manifest as nothing more than a red flush of heat along his neck.

In the attic, he slammed his bag down on the banister and stalked around the space. Every squeaked footstep on the dusty floorboards shrieked back. _Trapped. Trapped. Trapped._

The sound of the door closing and keys scraping in the lock alerted him that he was alone at last. Akira could not help the way he turned and kicked hard at the ladder lying on the tarp nearby. It clattered loudly and satisfyingly, soothing the rage that was rising up his throat as a scream that he desperately wanted to keep down.

The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and Akira jerked his gaze over to the other side of the attic that sat dark and more foreboding than ever with the foul weather outside. It set his teeth on edge.

“WHAT!?” he snarled at it, lifting his hands to rip off his stupid fake glasses and rub at his face where a headache was starting to swell into life behind his eyes. 

Seconds ticked by, and with every pulse of his head, the inferno in him grew fainter until all that was left was his slumped shoulders and ash.   
  
The darkness did not weigh in on his anger, and the longer Akira stood there, the more foolish he felt for his outburst. Getting mad did not change anything, and screaming at the void that was very much intent on stalking him during the sleeping hours seemed all the more reckless.

In the end, Akira sighed, going over to the warped cardboard box he had stuffed into the shelving unit to pry it out and dig around. It smelled like mildew and unkindness, making him worry that the clothes he wore carried that odor. It was just yet another thing to worry about that could alienate him further.

Near the bottom he found his toiletries, prying them out along with a towel and some pajamas. What he needed was to wash away the anger, let it circle the drain and disappear into the depths where it was safer to keep.

The cafe felt strangely eerie without Sojiro or customers present, and the lack of sound from the television created a whole different atmosphere. Everything sat too still and quiet like a museum after closing. He tried to not let it bother him. He went to the restroom door, opening it and going very still.

While he had brushed his teeth in this abysmally dim bathroom that morning, he’d not paid the room itself much mind. There was a second door and as he opened it to find nothing but cleaning products and a broom inside his stomach went hot and thick with self-righteousness.

The cafe didn’t have a _shower_. Of all of the problems he could have anticipated on his way to Tokyo, the lack of basic hygiene requirements was not something he had given any thought to. A molten stone settled in his throat as Akira slammed the door shut and did his best not to burst into overwhelmed tears of stress.

A drop of water fell from the faucet with a loud thud on the stainless steel, and the light over the mirror flickered ominously. The room was the oddest mixture of wet spices, standing water, and cloying flowery cleaner. The mirror was dirty, reflecting back his desolate expression with flecks marring the image.

“Fuck,” Akira whined, rubbing at his face and hating the way his voice sounded cracked and clogged with unshed tears. The tear in his defenses felt like losing. “I just wanted to take a shower.” All it took was one pitiful sniff before he could feel the scald of tears sliding down his face. He hoped they were all happy. This is where they broke him down for the first time; in this dingy bathroom over a _shower_.

It was pathetic. 

Akira glared at his reflection, stubbornly dashing his fingers against his face to rid his cheeks of tears. His movements were jerky and violent as he began to yank at his clothes. He tugged his shirt overhead and hurried to peel off his pants until they were in a heap on the floor. Normally he might try to keep them clean and folded, but in that moment, all that mattered was pushing forward with a vengeance.

Naked, he ran water in the sink and began the most miserable military style bath he could imagine. The water never grew warm, and washing his hair over the sink was a challenge he’d never like to repeat, made all the more insulting knowing he would have to do it constantly for a year.

It took great effort to get all the soap from his curls, bent over with his tear induced runny nose and the awful water pressure. All in all, by the time he finally left that torture chamber masquerading as a bathroom, he was exhausted.

Akira threw himself into a booth, slumping forward over the table. The surface was grossly sticky against his cheek and his hair dripped tiny puddles along the surface. He stayed like that for several minutes, desperately sniffing back the possibility of more tears and trying his best to focus on the sounds of the cafe instead. Music from the bar next door bled in through the walls, soft and muffled but reaffirming he wasn’t alone. A dog barked somewhere far off, and occasionally he could hear the murmur of voices in conversation as they walked to their train station.

He was so focused that he didn’t notice the change at first. The room was already dark, lit only by the window panes of the door, but the dim of the room became darker and darker. When he finally did realize what was happening, it was hard to even make out the shapes of the coffee bins behind the counter, or the gleam of the stainless steel in the cooking area.

Cold seeped in slowly. His mind immediately wondered if that storm from earlier had finally blown in fully. Cloud cover and fog and chilly winds, but no...Akira was certain the cold was snaking its way into his bones from the stairs. He could almost picture it like heavy fog dripping and curling its way down the creaking steps to slither up his leg.

His heart leapt into action, thrumming in his chest painfully as he looked around the room for the source. Akira knew the cause. He had foolishly thought that being downstairs would afford him any kind of protection.

He sat there in terrified silence, cold droplets of water from his hair rolling down his neck and under his collar like trailing fingers. Seconds ticked by in choking fear, and Akira almost jumped over movement until he realized it was an icy plume of his own breath. The room had gone so cold that even his breath was visible.

Before his eyes the glass of the door began to spider delicately outward until every pane was covered in a glittering curtain of frost, further dousing any remaining light in the room. The tears he had shed felt frozen at the corner of his eyes, and his lungs burned painfully with the chill.

"Go away. Please,” he whispered, blinking and hating that the difference between his eyes open and his eyes closed was so miniscule.

A sound so loud and deafening Akira just knew it was a gunshot blasted through the black around him. It was cacophonous and metallic, and it felt like a sharp blade gouged his heart with how much it startled him. He could all but feel his hair turning white in that split second of absolute blinding terror.

Pure instinct took him over. Akira slammed out of the booth and leapt over the bar. It was incredibly stupid. He heard something fall and slam onto the floor, and his hip banged so hard against the counter that he was positive it would bruise. He slid over the surface and then fell to the floor on the other side with a sickening crunch. The tile here was grimy and sticky, and it smelled like dirty mop water, artificial lemon and mud.

It didn’t matter. Akira fumbled in the dark, his breath short and puffing before him. He’d question how he could even see it without light, but he didn’t have time. He scrabbled from drawer to drawer until he yanked his hand back with a yelp. 

There was no mistaking the sting of a blade, and while he could already feel the burn of a cut and the slickness of blood, he reached back in to grab the knife by the handle. Weapon in hand, he flung himself over the counter again. He managed far more gracefully this time around and rushed to the meager light of the door where he immediately tried to unlock it.

The deadbolt was frozen in place. It would not move, and all he could think to do was shove his back up against his only exit and face the dark. Just as he had experienced the night before, the darkness seemed to be a living thing. Movement teemed in its recesses, oily and sinister like spilled ink on a table top oozing slowly and pointedly towards his hand.

“What do you want!?” Akira begged, the handle of the knife slippery in his grasp from his own blood. “I don’t want to be here! I don’t have a choice! I’m sorry!”

Every soft word tossed into the darkness seemed to be consumed and shredded between invisible teeth. The yawn of nothing before him roiled and inched and swelled with every thready breath that left his lungs.

The tv turned on with a sudden blast of blinding light. It was nothing but jagged snow on the screen, and the screech of static sent razor wire down his spine. It illuminated the room in the sickly glow, creating shadows that seemed wrong, too solid and too long.

It also shed just enough light that Akira could make out the stairwell. He had expected to see the silhouette of a monster standing there, but instead he saw the very obvious shape...of a ladder.

The ladder he had kicked in a moment of rage not an hour ago.

Even as he stared in pure, unfiltered confusion and fear the static became jumbled like a radio unable to find a good connection. It was like he was hearing multiple channels fighting for dominance. There was an explosion, and then screams that cut off abruptly to the neutral female voice of a tv reporter. “..ask ourselves how such a senseless tragedy and loss of life could happen…”

It was that more than anything that sent a chill down his spine even as loud snippets of nothing kept jangling his nerves from animal roars to gun shots. 

And just as suddenly as it had turned on, the tv shut off once again. The silence it left was somehow louder. His ears were ringing, and the after image of the screen stained the darkness in a sickly way like a spectre watching him.

It was in that vast and bone chilling silence that he heard the sound of footsteps. They were not running. They were unhurried and _heavy_. They thundered slow and purposeful along the ceiling. In his _room_.

Each footfall felt like a death knell. What bothered Akira more than anything else was that he knew...he _knew_ that those footsteps were _angry_. If someone asked him how, he wouldn’t have been able to verbalize an answer, but every new sound from them filled him dread.

He could track each one. Whatever it was, it was at his bannister where they stopped. There was a long pause that felt eternal and full of anxiety made of needlepoints and broken glass.

And then a single deafening squeak, light and delicate, filled the cafe. A step onto the first step of the stairs. Misery unspooled inside of him like poison in a well. It tainted every part of him. It was not even a surprise to feel tears dripping from his jaw. 

They were coming down.

Another breathless squeak under some tremendous weight sounded, and after three achingly tense seconds another groan of old wood broke him further. Something fragile inside of him snapped, and before he could even understand what he was doing Akira was screaming.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT!?”

His voice was inhuman, clogged with tears and sounding clawed raw. It was feral and desperate, and filled with something beyond fear.

A final, blood curdling squeak resounded in the space...and suddenly the air changed.

Akira stood there in numb shock, body locked so tight it physically hurt. The darkness and the cold receded. Tension that had physically manifested in the air he was breathing leached away, and he turned just enough to see the spider web of frost on the windows melting.

The music from next door sweetly caressed his ears, and the sound of leaves scattering along the pavement outside nearly made Akira jump a foot in the air.

It was...over.

It was gone.

Akira lurched over to flip on the lights. The yellow glow of them was less comforting than he had hoped. It threw the cafe into a strangely too real light, but it was better than the dark. On the stairs, the ladder was still there. It had obviously been thrown down, and it lay there on the small landing out of place and strange. His own blood dotted the floor, and he was certain he’d knocked over one of Sojiro’s metal coffee pots.

It took him over an hour to work up the nerve to finally cart the ladder back upstairs. The attic was a nightmare to his anxiety fueled mind. He dropped the ladder and grabbed his blanket and pillow so fast it was a wonder he didn’t trip on his way back down.

He mopped up the blood and washed his hands, finding a mostly unused first aid kit in the kitchen. Even after he created a makeshift bed in one of the booths, it took him hours to fall asleep, but he must have. The sound of a key in the lock woke him up in a blind panic only to see light streaming in and Sojiro stepping inside.

The man curled his lip in disgust to see him sleeping in his cafe. Akira mumbled some small sort of apology and rushed away to get ready for school. What could he possibly say? That his cafe was haunted? That he was bullied by darkness during the night? That...that whatever this was had tried to rape him the night before and had...what? Met his temper tantrum with one of its own?

It made no sense, but his stomach rumbled with bile from so little food and so much stress. He trudged up the stairs with anxiety bubbling through his system, but the attic was at least less intimidating drenched in morning sunlight.

He went straight for his box to grab clothes, casting queasy glances towards the shadows. As he turned to look for his shoes, though, he stopped dead midstep, the color leaving his face entirely as his eyes caught sight of the floor.

There was a fresh layer of dust on the floorboards, and written there in the fine layer of dirt were the words:

_I WANT TO SEE ALL OF YOU._

Akira almost didn’t dare to move. Suddenly stripping away his clothes to change seemed like an awful thing to do. With a sick swallow, he gathered everything he needed and went back down to change in the bathroom and brush his teeth.

On his second trip up the stairs to grab his school bag the message was gone. The floor was just as dust covered as ever, as if it had never existed in the first place. 

And his shoes now sat upon the ladder on the floor. Akira grabbed them and shot downstairs, rattled and confused and feeling like he’d never be able to feel safe again. The news on the television pleasantly reported an incident where a wild animal had mauled a tourist. 

Something about territory. Something about being driven to it by humans.

Akira ignored it, tying his shoes and trying to ignore the pulsing ache of his bandaged hand. He wished he’d never kicked that damn ladder.


	3. Chapter 3

It was strange how the rain and cramped subway made last night feel further away and vaguely unreal. The press of bodies so tight that Akira was forced to hug his bag to his chest was life affirming, even if they were all faceless strangers.

Outside the train was even more anonymous. Every passerby was reduced down to an umbrella color trundling through the grey streets. No names. No faces. Only slumped, tired bodies and ringtones.

He was successful in arriving to school on time today. The fear of any future angry outbursts that could trigger this ghost was incentive enough to get there early. The inside of the school was once again too bright and too clean when the world outside the windows remained so dark. Almost immediately upon entering the whispers started, following him all the way to his first class.

The class was social studies, and Akira boredly got out a notebook for notes, twirling his pen between his fingers. The teacher was an older man with an equally too old pair of glasses. He wore his shirt one size too big, and held up his equally too large pants with thick suspenders framing a criminally wide tie.

He was rude and obviously disenfranchised with youths in general, but Akira had yet to get any sort of vibe from him like he had from Kawakami and Komoshida.

“Hey, new kid.”

Akira’s whole body bristled at the call out without name or respect, but all the same he sat up to give this man his attention like a model student would.

“The Greek philosopher Plato divided the human soul into three parts. A soul is composed of appetite, spirit, and what else?”

The question trickled down his spine like cold sweat as his mind immediately threw out “fear”. He knew it wasn’t the answer, but it felt more true than the one he knew to be correct.

“Logic,” he offered quietly, doing his level best to keep eye contact with the teacher and not pay any mind to the nearly twenty eyes staring him down from the rest of his peers.

A tinge of respect and surprise filtered through the professor’s stony expression, and Akira’s eyes zeroed in on it like a snapping branch in a silent forest. “Correct. So you knew that, huh?”

The reaction among the class was instantaneous. Whispers and oohs and aahs of surprise filled the room. All eyes turned on him like heat seeking missiles, and Akira avoided making contact with any of them. 

Even amid the sudden rise of murmurs, his teacher still stared at him with curiosity and interest as he continued to speak. “Plato’s teacher, Socrates, said that evil is born from ignorance...”

Akira listened to this with absolute focus. Was this evil thing in the attic not evil at all? Was it misunderstood? Was he painting it as something evil out of his own ignorance when it was truly more complicated than that?

His mind was a flurry of thoughts. He barely even heard the stupid things his classmates said about him being a punk that was somehow good in school. All that seemed to matter in that moment was the idea that perhaps he was letting his own fear get the better of him. It felt far too close to hope on his tongue.

That thought followed him like a spectre for the rest of the school day. Akira kept his head down and his gaze to himself from class to class, despite all the baiting he received from fellow students and teachers alike. He couldn’t even feel upset when his mind was so thoroughly preoccupied with sinister shadows that left him cryptic messages in the dust.

Akira was already halfway to the train station before he even realized school had let out. The rain pattered against the umbrella above his head in a pleasant rhythm, and the world smelled heavily of petrichor and wet cement. 

He tried to imagine any of these faceless passersby having a ghost or whatever his stalker was in their attic or apartment closet. Was he alone? Or did any number of these strangers deal with the same terrors at night? How many of them had figured out what their monster wanted? 

The more he thought about it, however, the more certain Akira felt that he was the only one. The blur of people around felt less real than his haunting phantom. Each person that parted around his still figure felt like little more than human origami shapes growing soggy in the rain. Every one of them never stopped walking. They never caught his eye. They just existed on their route, and he was little more than a tuft of grass growing irreverently in the cracks of the sidewalk and inconveniencing them.

A stark cascade of lightning lit up the street, and the booming crack of thunder followed him down the steps to the train. The ride was stuffy and cramped, and a fast food advertisement above the handrails proclaimed that he should ‘feed his wild side’.

The cafe was devoid of customers when he arrived, the small space only populated by Sojiro and his foul mood. It felt like a solid stone wall for how palpable it was just past the front door, and Akira sighed quietly to himself as he closed the door behind him.

Unsurprisingly, Sojiro demanded his help with the dishes that he had obviously kept rotting in the sink since this morning just for him when he returned from school. The joke was on him though. Akira welcomed any excuse to stay out of the attic and to not be alone. 

It was in better spirits than yesterday that he rolled up his sleeves and got to work running water, listening to the constant drone of the tv and the rustle of Sojiro’s paper in the background. It occurred to Akira that he couldn’t possibly have enough articles to read that he was still working on that thing going on four in the afternoon. Especially with no customers. 

While he scrubbed at the stained curry pot, Akira strained his ears towards the attic above them to see if he could hear even the vague implication of sounds from the floorboards. Those footsteps had been booming in his memory of last night.

The ceiling above him remained silent, as did Sojiro. The man didn’t even chastise him when he got to work on his homework at one of the tables with a cup of coffee. The man turned the volume down and for the rest of the evening they listened to the gentle rain outside the cafe, simply existing in one another’s presence. Whatever sour mood Sojiro had been in before had thawed at his arrival, leaving an uneasy calm in its wake.

Unsurprisingly, the older man elected to close up shop early to go pick up dinner for himself and his mystery caller. Akira wanted to childishly beg him not to leave, but dutifully followed him to the door to flip the sign and lock it after his departure.

The click of the deadbolt felt unfathomably loud in the space. What had been comfortable, breathing silence not seconds before now felt sharp, cold, and vaguely threatening. Every exhale he took left him in paranoia that he would suddenly see his breath again right before the lights shut off and plunged him into aggressive darkness.

That shift never happened. The cafe remained still and silent, and the soft thrum of life outside still filtered in muffled and calm. No great evil rushed out to greet him now that he found himself alone.

If this being was evil at all.

It felt silly, but Akira turned the volume up on the television a little too loud, wanting to feel like there was someone there with him. He didn’t go upstairs. Instead, he stayed in the cafe playing on his phone and enjoying the sounds of the people outside. 

It was during a particularly nauseating jingle for a shoe commercial that he heard it. Above his head, even over the noise, the sound of heavy footsteps on old, creaking wood filtered down. His blood ran cold and painfully thick in his veins, his hands frozen over his phone game even as the time ran out.

The footsteps moved slowly and unhurriedly across the ceiling above him towards the stairs, each footfall making his heart jolt painfully in his chest. Phantom weight caused the top stair to whine loudly, and Akira held his breath for the next step.

But it never came. 

Seconds pounded by in terror. He’s not sure what he expected. Darkness to descend? A black cloud to slither its way down the steps? A dark humanoid wearing steel boots?

A loud ‘clank’ made Akira jump in the booth as down the steps rolled and toppled a familiar looking rusted can of paint, likely the same one he had used to move the spider from his bag the day before. It made a ridiculous amount of noise the whole way down until it rolled along the floor of the cafe, coming to a halt against his shoe.

No voice called down to him. The only other sound was the gurgle of a pipe, but Akira could clearly see a shadow looming there in the stairwell, bleeding out at odd angles and shifting into longer shapes even as he stared.

The being had come down to the cafe just last night. Why was it lingering? Why was it waiting?

Akira swallowed thickly and bent down to gingerly pick up the can. It was ice cold against his palm, and a glance back to the stairs showed the shadow was gone. It was then that he decided to do the stupidest thing he could think to do.

He headed towards the stairs.

The stairwell was empty, devoid of shadows and shapes. Each step he took creaked and groaned under his weight, announcing his arrival one step at a time like strange organ music.

His eyes adjusted to the dark as he reached the top of the stairs. The attic was bathed in moonlight and shadow, colors made silver and black and cold. The darkness to his left yawned out into a void that gnashed its teeth at the edges, hungry and vacuous as a black hole.

But it did not move.

He felt something in the air so strongly it threatened to choke him. _Anticipation_. The dark felt like it was holding its breath and watching his every move like a prowling predator. Akira could feel hundreds of unseen eyes branding his skin. He was reminded of his curiosity from the other morning.

How many eyes did spiders have?

He set the paint can down on the bannister where he had left it, trying his best to ignore the absolutely thundering pace of his heart. Panic was scraping at the edges of his entire being like briars on a forest path. He could turn back. He could stay downstairs with the front door near and the cheerful news reporters and late night teen dramas between laundry soap ads…or he could find out what this thing _wanted_.

“You want to see all of me?” he whispers, finding his breath leaving him in wisps of white smoke as they had last night. He had been so scared on his way up that he hadn’t even _felt_ the temperature change under the oppressive adrenaline.

Across the way, his sad little mattress propped up on milk crates was the brightest object in the room. It looked like a lighthouse beckoning him forward into safe harbor. Dust motes winked like gentle diamonds in the moonbeams, clearly illuminating the jagged and treacherous broken floorboards. 

All he could think of was how convenient that was. Perhaps it wasn’t safe harbor at all, but dark waters hiding sharp rocks and shipwrecks in their shallow depths. The dark beyond the bannister shifted slowly and unsettlingly. The only word that came to Akira’s mind in that moment was that the darkness _coiled_. Muscle and scales made of pitch and nightmares that slithered and curled and promised that whatever his fate was...it would not be quick.

The lack of response to his question made Akira angry. There was only silence. Thick, _eager_ silence. Full of anticipation.

_Expectation._

Akira glared towards the dark side of the attic, something tight and ugly budding in his chest that felt like a thousand wrongdoings that had not left a scar, but a festering _wound_ in their wake.

He could not say what compelled him to walk slowly across the room towards the bed spotlighted before him. Stupidity or a feeling of inevitability or just the need to prove that he wasn’t afraid.

Oh, but he was afraid. Terror sat like cold stone in his stomach, weighing down each step he made. His mouth felt dry and ashen, a wasteland made bitter from the aftertaste of coffee and the fresh, sharp flavor of panic.

The sheets felt scratchy beneath his palm as he eased down to a sit, staring out towards the other half of the room in defiance. Still nothing happened. Still Akira’s heart pounded. Still the darkness prowled and watched and _waited_.

“You want to see all of me?” he repeated, sounding as if he was trying to work out a puzzle. The message had been in response to his temper tantrum the night before. Whatever this monster was, it had watched him in a moment of weakness, had watched him fall apart and react to his problems childishly.

“Is that what you want?” Akira went on, his brows knitting and his palms damp where he rubbed them against his jeans. “You want to watch me break again? Do you get off on watching me cry?”

There was no response at all to his words. The shadow loomed empty and callous, ravenous for something more that Akira could not fathom. 

“They took me out of my home. They made me into someone I’m not, and everyday they insult me and belittle me and tell me how much I _deserve_ it all. That should be enough, but now I have you.”

The words left him faster and faster, and Akira could feel his nose begin to burn and heat welling up in his eyes, blurring his vision of the room. When he spoke his voice cracked under the pressure that felt like it should break his bones in addition to his morale.

“Fuck, what do you want!” he shouted, rubbing at his feverish face. “Is it all just to watch me suffer? See all of me. The only thing to see that’s left is how fucking _angry_ I am. How _disgusted_ I am with who I have let myself become. I was never this meek, frightened _child_. Is that what you want to hear?

The silence answered back heavy and devoid of any sort of response. It was so quiet Akira could hear a pin drop. It was no pin that reached his ears, however, but the softest, most distant of taps. 

For a moment Akira was sure it was the creature. Morse code perhaps? A guidance towards an answer? The longer he listened to the insistent tap tap tap he realized it was coming from behind him.

He turned towards the window and out towards the building next door where there was a small outdoor lamp. It cast harsh shadows in vague flurried motions as a moth smashed itself recklessly against the bulb again and again and again.

His gaze slid back around to the attic, and Akira rubbed at the teartracks now drying on his cheeks. When had they fallen?

The attic loomed across from him, callous and uncaring and still fucking waiting. Unbidden, his mind replayed the moment when he had first arrived to this attic and the moth had fallen down to land next to his boot, dying twitching in the dust. That tiny, inconsequential thud of its body on the wood had filled the silence in that moment monumentally.

Perhaps it was that memory that had Akira leaning forward, unlacing one boot and then the other while never taking his gaze away from the room across the way. The heavier thud of the rubber soles on the dusty floor had the same feeling of defeat that left the taste of mud on his tongue.

Removing his socks was easier than the shoes had been. He peeled the thick, slightly damp cotton away from his feet one at a time. He was so distracted by his staring contest with the nothing that he noticed too late one of them fell down the gaping maw of the broken floorboards.

His bare feet on the dirty floor sent a strange thrill up his spine. He could remember when he was very young how he would play outside when it rained, despite his mother warning him not to. Akira had loved splashing in puddles until his pants soaked through, and digging in the damp earth until he could find the wriggling earthworms that danced in the rain.

This motion held the same sense of adrenaline and chaotic euphoria. He had always loved doing what he wasn’t supposed to. It felt exceptionally poignant now, facing down his literal fear, his cheeks still itching with dried tears.

He reached down and wrapped his fingers against the bottom edge of his shirt, staring in demand for the darkness to react while he tugged. He pulled the fabric up, letting his body fluidly follow the path of it, the fabric whispering in the silence. The stretch of the movement felt good and relaxing in the muscles along his shoulders, and Akira actually enjoyed the sensation of the too cold air when it blasted against his skin and sent miles of gooseflesh in its wake.

What was he doing? The question blared in his head loud and repeatedly like a siren. The fear was still with him, burning through his veins, but there was something else now. A sensation that was slick and hot and self-righteous that warred against the cold to leave him feverish and foolhardy.  
  
As he stared, the shadows across the way warped and melted, seeping along the floor and the walls in impossible shapes like barbed, stretching hands. Terror mingled with anger and rash confidence, tasting like razors and hard candies. It felt like sweet, delicious defiance to reach down and begin unfastening his jeans. Akira _smirked_ at the unseen fiend, his breath coming in anxious pants.

“Is _this_ what you wanted? To see _all_ of me?” he questioned out loud, letting the words drip from his tongue like honey, sticky and enticing and ready to trap whatever was stupid enough to drop down for a taste.

His fingers didn’t fumble at his fly like he thought they would. Instead, they moved confidently and smoothly, easing the button free and then pulling the zipper. The many toothed purr of it brought back stark memories of how the sound of handcuffs had felt to his ears. 

Akira bowed his back slowly and deliberately, his chest thrusting forward and his head tipping back until his chin pointed to the ceiling. He imagined his back as ribbon, but for the first time since that awful night he _didn’t_ feel like a knife was pressed to the base of his spine in wait to shape him.

He would not bend tonight.

That thought repeated in his mind like a mantra, and he sat up straight again to bore his gaze into the darkness. The feeling that flooded him as he stood up was defiance, but it was lust that permeated his entire being when he began to drag his jeans down his legs.

He used his feet to get them off of his ankles, leaving him there in the dim moonlight in only his underwear. The chill was settling in to his bones, but it didn’t seem to matter when his insides were churning with heat and adrenaline and the pure fucking thrill that was clutching a grain of power in an uncertain situation.

They did say power was intoxicating. Akira certainly felt drunk, plunging his thumbs beneath the elastic of his waistband and peeling them down and off in heady insolence.

His heart banged so fast and so hard in his chest it _hurt_ , and his breath was so short he felt lightheaded, but nothing could take away from this bizarre victory. Nothing could diminish this soul deep hunger now welling up in his stomach and unspooling in fevered hazy waves.

Akira didn’t even need to look down to know that he was aroused. The soft, chilled current of the air brushing against his hot skin sent shivers through him and caused his toes to curl into the dust under his feet. The shadows swelled and seemed to pulse, writhing so darkly that the movement strained his eyes when he tried to make out its shape.

He couldn’t help but wonder once again just how many eyes a spider had. How many did this predatory darkness have? It felt like hundreds upon hundreds of eyes were on him, pinpricks of stares drumming into every inch of his bare, exposed skin like ants.

The silence was almost suffocating. Downstairs, he had heard the sounds of foot traffic and cars and radios. Here in the attic, it was as if the world had been cut off at the stairs, leaving him and the monster alone. He had the uncanny certainty that if he were to scream...no soul would hear him.

It was a good thing he had no intention of calling for help. Not tonight.

A smirk curled along his lips, lazy and impudent, and Akira eased back slowly onto the bed. He folded his thick blanket into a neat square in a thoroughly unhurried fashion, adding it into a stack on top of his pillow before he laid down. He put on quite the show of getting comfortable, but thanks to all of the bedding beneath his head he could still stare down the attic from his prone position. As if he would let it out of his sight.

Just being in the bed seemed to excite the phantom presence. Akira watched in awe and curiosity to see the inky black coil and fold on itself in a way that didn’t make sense to his mind. It was not physical shadow or smoke or anything with shape, but it _moved_ undeniably in a way that reminded him of his eyes trying to adjust to ever changing light or sunspots in his vision that burned darker black than his surroundings.

It was dizzying and made his head ache in time with the madcap beat of his heart. If there was one thing Akira was sure of, it was that he had his tormentor’s attention.

Good.

Akira forcibly shoved any remaining fear to the corner of his mind and reached down boldly. The sensation of his chilled fingers wrapping around the blistering heat of his cock was unparalleled. It jumped greedily in his grasp, his body eager to be touched, to be watched, to be made a spectacle of.

Ever since that first night when this supernatural being had held him down and removed his clothes, he could not figure out what it wanted. It did not have a body to violate him, but it still wanted ownership of him. To what end?

He was no closer to the answers to those questions, but this act felt like he was posing questions of his own. Questions with bite underneath, full of demands and screams of outrage. As he began to oh-so-slowly drag his fist up and down the length of his arousal, the act felt visceral and darkly rewarding as if he were raking his nails into the dark entity and drawing inky blood.

A deep moan bubbled up from his throat, too loud and too thick with lust to be real. The chill seemed to recede further and further away with every passing scorching second. Even the attic melted away from his attention until all that was left was his body, his lust, and his audience.

An audience that felt far larger and far more solid than ever before as it gaped and existed on a grand scale so close by. His breath was the only sound in the silent space, ragged and frosted and too loud for how quiet he knew he was being.

His cock felt heavy in his grasp, growing slick with precum and glistening in the moonlight that pooled over him like he was on a stage. Perhaps that was the reason Akira eagerly put on a show, arching his back and jerking his hips up into the circle of his hand with increased fervor. Never in his life had he ever felt like this. There was something all encompassing and devastatingly sexy about being watched in this most intimate of activities.

Being a teenager was predictable, but it was jarring for him to realize this was the first time he had touched himself since he was last in his own bedroom in his hometown. It hadn’t been long, less than a week, but it didn’t take away from the sheer intensity of the pleasure he was experiencing at his own hand.

Fireworks cascaded sulfur bright and tingling all over his body. Still he did not look away from his captive nemesis, even as his chest began to grow flushed and pink, and his toes curled into the scratchy sheets.

He was utterly blinded by his own ecstacy and the rampant glee over doing something so sordid and ill-behaved. Akira hungrily spread his legs for the phantom’s thousand eyed stare, wide and indecent, cocking his hips just perfectly to show every lewd bit of himself while his hand still working furiously and his breath left him in heavier and more desperate pants.

“What?” he challenged breathlessly, his teeth flashing in the darkness with his smile. “Don’t want to take what isn’t unwilling?”

Fuck, it felt good to be in control of this one small thing. He squeezed down harder, gasping and falling into a decadent moan that sounded like melted chocolate even to his own ears. Akira slid his free arm beneath his thigh, snaking it around until he could press his fingertips in a teasing caress against the exposed and delicate skin of his perineum.

A torrent of fresh pleasure battered over his body like driving rain. Mixed with the scent of petrichor still on the air from the ongoing rain of the day, the sensation was powerful. He inexplicably felt like he was lying in a deep puddle in a rainstorm, paralyzed by the pleasurable downpour and slowly, but inevitably drowning in it.

Akira jerked his hand back up, taking two fingers into his mouth and letting his tongue lave and coil around the digits. His eyes opened and gazed towards the darkness, letting his lips fall open to reveal the dirty movements in flirtatious glimpses of tongue and hints of glistening flesh.

Only once he was sure it would be enough did he pull his fingers free and slide them back down into the same position, pressing lower down this time around. Just the sensation of his saliva damp fingertips against his most intimate spot sent a shudder of want roaring down his spine to pool maddeningly in the ever tightening cord of pleasure in his gut.

The burn and give of his own body to his finger while the creature watched on felt like an insurrection. He was taking what this entity wanted for his own enjoyment. He was going to savor and relish every second of what the phantom wanted him to _fear_. 

His moan dripped past his lips, cracking at the edges as his composure frayed and unraveled. Fuck, it _stung_ and it burned, but in a way that reminded him of day old sore muscles from gymnastics practice. It felt _good._

It was the first good sensation he’d felt since his arrest.

The thought slammed into him with the speed and force of a runaway train, and Akira was shocked to his toes to hear the hysterical, broken sounding laugh that bubbled up and out of his throat in that moment. He _laughed_ even as he kept moving, jerking his fist in a rush over the thick shape of his arousal and moving and shifting until he was defiantly shoving two fingers inside of his body instead.

It hurt, but it was hurt _he_ caused, and that alone made it feel like pure, mind-rending bliss.

His eyes had slipped shut at some point. Akira did not know when. The shade behind his eyes was velveteen and comforting, pulsing with the heated thrum of his body the closer and closer he came to the edge.

It was the sound of heavy boots on the floorboards that made him snap his eyes open once again. What he saw sent a blood-curdling shard of ice into his chest, stopping his heart. 

Looming from the darkness that had been formless and alien, there was now a smudge of paleness. Akira gasped loud, his grip going stone tight around his cock in sheer surprise. The paleness became more obvious as the strange _thing_ walked forward from the tight shadows.

It...was a mask. On a humanoid face. 

Akira watched in paralyzed horror as a man walked forward towards the bed. He could see his assailant at last in physical form, and nothing about this figure made sense. It wore heavy boots with curled toes that left plumes of dust with every jarring step, and thick black pants that bloomed out at the thighs dramatically. Its shirt was a tight fitting spiderweb that glinted in the moonlight and clutched at its throat like a hand. Over all of it was a heavy, heavy looking leather coat, huge sleeves ending in equally massive cuffs like every pirate in the story books he read as a child.

On its hands were gloves so red that even in the dim they practically glowed in toxic warning. His brain helplessly chose that moment to remember that many species of animal used bright colors to ward off predators, or warn that they were dangerous themselves.

Even so, the only part that truly filled his heart with terror, the likes of which he had never experienced before, was the face. 

The face that looked down at him in his splayed, naked, and vulnerable position was his own. It was a mirror image of him, identical down to every last curl spilling over that white, bone-like mask and the smirk twisting his lips.

The horrifying doppelganger leaned down over him, planting one blood red hand right beside his head. Spikes of ice and steel stabbed through his veins again and again, and Akira could feel the tingle in his face and fingers that hinted at panic strong enough to send him blacking out. 

His own dark eyes slid down to look at him, shadowed by the mask and he could swear that the pupils were not simply black but a bottomless pit that Akira was certain could swallow him whole.

The spectre’s smirk deepened into a predatory slash of deep amusement and thrill, and the feeling of biting cold leather against the back of his hand nestled low between his legs made Akira jump and inhale in fear.

“You were doing so well,” the monster crooned, its voice oddly far away, but made of dust and eyes and tv static with a starving undercurrent of endless, starless sky.

The hand _shoved_ , forcing Akira’s fingers impossibly deeper inside of him and against the needy bundle of nerves hidden there. Pleasure filled his lungs instead of air. He forgot how to breath, how to speak, how to _think._

Thought evaporated entirely and became another useless forgotten thing like the dust on the floor as soft, cold lips descended over his own. It was like being kissed by a rose grown in snowfall. He could never hope to describe the velvety, dense chill that met the roaring heat of his body.

Akira kissed back helplessly, bending his neck to the side and letting his trembling lips fall open in terrified surrender.

His devilish double pushed against his hand again, yet harder than before, and it was too much. Adrenaline raced through him like broken glass and razorblades along with the sticky, honey sweet surge of pleasure as orgasm slammed into him with unstoppable force.

He cried out loudly into the cold, hungry void of the phantom’s mouth, and jarring heat spilled across his stomach and chest in feverish, daydream slow motion. Seconds slurred by in exquisite hot-cold abyss until at last Akira’s mind seeped back into the cracks to push reality back into his awareness.

Akira jerked back from whatever-this-was with a snap harsh enough to make his neck hurt. The entity before him smirked and eased back an unhelpful few inches. The shadows in the room were going darker and more numerous, making its eyes start to slowly fade into darkness beneath the bone white of the mask.

He watched in frozen confusion as what he thought at first was ink ebbs along the edge of the mask and then slowly dripped down in a dark line along its face. It followed the curve of his own cheek, rolling inward to graze the corner of his mouth and then drip down the side of his chin and curl up to crawl down the length of his pale throat.

A couple more drops of the dark liquid rolled down from the other side until it almost looked like it was crying. But it couldn’t be. No, the smirk on this face that should be his own but _couldn’t_ be his own was too deep and too amused.

Akira watched in breathless trepidation as the fiend delicately opened his mouth, lazy and confident and full of gleaming teeth to run his tongue along the bloody corner of his upper lip, lapping up the dark liquid and looking for all the world like a ferocious beast sated by a particularly good meal.

“Mmm, close,” it whispered, pressing a freezing leather finger along the curve of one of Akira’s brows in an icy line that sent cold deep into his bones. It made him feel heavy and sleepy even in his panic and terror. That could be the only explanation for his slow blink, because when his vision slid back to him the phantom was gone.

The window beside him was frosted over, muddying the moonlight, but the silvery light itself was brighter now, chasing away the shadows in the room in a way that felt far more natural. His fingers were still inside of him, and his orgasm laid cooling on his skin. The only sign that he hadn’t been alone was the perfect trail of footprints in the dust leading up to his bed and the single drop of liquid resting on his chest that he can now see with absolute certainty was blood.

A ghost that could bleed?

Akira swallowed around the lump in his throat, relieved to hear the sounds of the outside world quietly existing just beyond his window. 

The sound and vibration of his phone going off on the bed sent Akira jumping violently, and he grabbed at it like he’d seen a ghost. The irony didn’t escape him. It was only an email alert, and Akira opened it just to feel the blinding light of his phone screen in the darkness.

It didn’t annoy him as much as it normally would have to see an ad letting him know about a going out of business sale for a game store he had frequented back home. A pang of loss filled his chest as he stared at the friendly text. It reminded him that he was okay. It was over for now.

He left the screen alight for comfort while he rooted around his school bag for tissues to clean himself up. The room now smelled heavily of dust and the deeper, earthier scent of his own activities. It was oddly comforting. Akira curled up under his blanket and stared at his phone to avoid staring at the attic, like if he focused on this one bright beacon the rest of his surroundings would cease to exist entirely.

He fell asleep under the bright, electronic glow, the words of the email superimposed on the back of his eyelids.

_EVERYTHING MUST GO._

  
\---------------------------

  
The only thing more scary than waking up in the attic every single morning was waking up there completely naked. Akira came to with slow, hazy flutters of his lashes, taking in the sun drenched, filthy floor and the sound of birds chirping outside the window at his back.

It was a rather terrible sign that the boot prints beside his bed didn’t fill him to the brim with tremors of fear but only a gut curdling sensation of dread and unhappiness. This was all becoming _normal_ , and that was worse than the fear.

Akira sat up slowly, comforted by the scent of coffee and spices wafting upstairs, and even though his back protested the lumpy atrocity of a mattress, his body felt oddly relaxed. He was calm and collected by nature, but something about last night had left him loose and fluid like no other orgasm ever had.

With great reluctance, he got up and began to get dressed, tugging his box of belongings out of the shelving unit and getting into his uniform. It was hard to ignore the wet cardboard smell that had begun to permeate everything he owned, held barely at bay by cologne and fabric spray. 

The whole time he slid into his clothes Akira eyed the messy, unused side of the attic that always stayed darker and forbidding, housing his most recent and greatest fear like the ocean depths hid sharks and Lovecraftian nightmares.

Nothing moved there this morning, and light stretched a little further into that uncharted domain than usual. It was almost like last night hadn’t happened, or it had all been his imagination.

The twinge he felt when he knelt down to put on his shoes was very real though, reminding him of just how roughly that strange ghost had pushed his fingers inside his body. This unknown terror had not yet left any scars on him, but aches were proof enough to keep him from lying to himself in a moment of weakness.

Shoes now on, Akira made his way slowly towards the stairs and the unofficial bisect of the space. He bravely stared it down, sightlessly reaching down and grabbing his bag. Still nothing moved. There was no roiling, sentient darkness. No spiders boring holes into his skin with hundreds of eyes. No sounds of heavy, booted footsteps. There was only the burble of the tv downstairs and the chatter of the birds.

“Are you awake!” 

Sojiro’s shout up the stairs made Akira jump in alarm, his gaze rushing towards the steps as if expecting to see him there. The only thing that greeted him was the rustle of the newspaper and a disgruntled grumble from down below. 

It was enough to shake his mood. He tightened his hold on the straps of his bag and headed down, his heart screeching to a painful stop to see the faint glimpse of his own face and bone white out of the corner of his eye on the way down.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t look back. 

Instead, he hurried down to the easy comfort of the cafe pale and faintly shaken, and when his eyes landed on the waiting plate of curry at the bar, he was relieved to realize at least half of it was from hunger.

Akira eagerly sat on the stool and began to dig in, casting his eyes over towards Sojiro and trying to avoid any looks towards the stairs. “Thank you for this.”

Sojiro’s newspaper rustled in response, a vague ‘mmmhm’ slithering around the pages. The curry burned at his tongue and made his nose run with every spoonful. It churned in his stomach along with the news on the front page declaring in large font that there had been another grisly subway accident.

It felt oddly wrong to calmly read about death and injury while fruitlessly chasing grains of rice off of his plate until it was perfectly clean save for the oily stain of sauce left behind. The slick, reddish sheen of it made him think of blood, and Akira could not put the plate into the sink fast enough.

While he washed it a news commentator on the tv cheerfully discussed a business charity event. Akira barely heard any of it, wiping his hands clean and then sliding the hated glasses onto his face in preparation of leaving.

His gaze landed on the tv, and Akira jumped in surprise at the dark smudge on the screen. At first glance, he had been positive it was a spider, but as his heart thumped erratically against his chest he calmed enough to realize it was only the shape of a moth.

It rested placidly against the reporter’s hair while she spoke, unmoving and unbothered by the shifting, too bright pixels beneath it, hugging desperately to the light it had found instead of banging against it.

The reporter kept talking about the masquerade ball charity event with a large, wooden smile on her face, voice warmly explaining where the proceeds would be going and big names that would be attending. 

Akira zoned out, grabbing his bag and slinging it on his shoulder as the report ended with an overly saccharine “...It goes to show that sometimes heroes _do_ wear masks! And now we mo-...”

The newspaper rustled again, a cranky grumble and clearing of a throat wafting out from the creased edges.

“If you’re late, you’re out. Get a move on.”

He was tempted to say something rude on his way out but didn’t chance it. The breeze that wafted across his face outside of the cafe was almost calming after that near miss of irritation, and it felt oddly good to shove his hands into his pocket and start to walk towards the station. Last night was still not far from his mind, though. Every step he took reminded him of the dull ache between his legs, and he could practically feel the chilly leather against his skin.

Even here, in the bright light of day, he felt vaguely haunted and uneasy. Every step away from the cafe was a safer one. Right?

The train was packed and uncomfortable as always, but he was given his breathing room again as he walked from the station towards the school. Up ahead of him two students talked with one another. The one with rather fluffy brown hair spoke the loudest, and Akira didn’t even have to eavesdrop to hear. 

“How annoying--we've barely started high school, and already they're making us play at a volleyball rally? And why are they pitting us against the teacher team? Kamoshida's gonna crush us.”

It was enough that Akira found himself listening more intently. Kamoshida had given him a bad feeling since they had run into each other on his first day. It was the same bizarrely uncomfortable sensation of ‘not right’ that he’d gotten from the rest of the staff.

The other student’s question was valid. _Why_ were they having a rally and pitting students against teachers? There was no holiday or sports meet. It felt like little more than an excuse for Kamoshida to laud his abilities to a captive audience.

  
“...Yeah, okay. You’re gonna get your face smashed in,” the other boy continued, alerting Akira to the fact that he had zoned out a bit. Even as he focused back in, a female student rushed by him in a blur.

“Just look at how banged up the volleyball team is,” his friend alluded. “What the hell goes on during those practices?”

And that was the question. Akira watched the girl’s back far up ahead, dashing up the stairs to the school that loomed large and oddly forbidding this particular afternoon. 

He had seen one member of the volleyball team in his homeroom, a thin and demure boy covered in bruises and bandaids. Just looking at him made Akira’s insides feel stomped down and squeezed lifeless. It _hurt_ to look at him, and he had heard enough whispered conversations to know it was happening in volleyball instead of at home.

For some reason, it was the phantom’s voice that whispered and played back in his mind as he took the steps up to the school himself. 

_You haven’t lost your voice yet. Good. Don’t let them take it_.

Beside him air displaced, and Akira looked up in time to watch the bruised boy breeze past him towards the doors like he had been thought into being. His eyes remained downcast towards the ground and his fingers looked delicate against the strap of his bag.

A strangled and starving feeling of kinship wormed through his stomach, reminding him that there were others suffering, guttering flames that were desperately trying not to blow out in the wind.

As Akira reached his home room, passing behind the boy’s desk on the way to his own at the window, he could almost swear that he smelled the smoke of a snuffed candle on the air.

  
\---------------

  
There was something about gymnasiums that felt like a portal into another world. Akira sat against the wall in the muggy room, his ass steadily going numb and sweat itching along his back under the bright red athletics suit. It was unbearably humid with so many people all packed together in the windowless space, and the constant burble of chatter from his classmates created a dull sort of roar in his ears.

The lights overhead buzzed never ending and cast the entire gym in an almost diseased shade of yellow. The scent of sweat mixed with too many perfumes, and underneath it all was the poisonous waft of bleach that creeped in from the bathrooms down near the locker rooms.

Every face his eyes landed on looked bored and miserable. One girl with curly blond pigtails idly stared at her own split ends and picked at her nail polish in despair, while a smaller girl with a ponytail and large doe eyes sat near her nursing a particularly ugly skinned knee from the girls game that had ended half an hour ago.

Now it was the boys team’s turn against the staff. Though it was likely more apt to say it was their turn against _Kamoshida._

The man stood there behind the net like a king upon his throne. From his current perspective he looked more alive and animated than ever before. His arms glistened with sweat and his oddly shaped curls stuck out and frizzed on the ends. He was smiling and making jokes with the other teachers who cheerfully paid no mind to their bruised students and their deadened expressions on the other side of the court. Kamoshida was all flashing, grinning teeth and dark, vacant eyes that reminded him immediately of the principal and how he had automatically compared his gaze to that of a bird’s.

With his large nose and ruffled hair, the comparison was very apt. The man resembled a puffed up and aggressive blackbird, a scavenger and a bully who fought over breadcrumbs.

It was easy enough to let his mind wander when he cared so little for Kamoshida and his ego. His thoughts naturally dripped down into the small, dark cavern he had erected in himself to house his memories and feelings about the phantom. Fears over being killed in his sleep, concerns about whether he was losing his mind, and anxiety over the fact that his terror was waning with each passing day.

The phantom could reignite it in a split second, of course. Every time it tried something new Akira felt fresh waves of trembling panic, but it was the kind of heart racing that made him want more; the high drop of a roller coaster or the rush of blood and tingling in his fingers as he pocketed a candy bar in a convenience store. His fear was evolving, turning into something that was both familiar and more horrifying. 

In the middle of all of his conflicting feelings was pure and simple curiosity. Why him? Why that attic? What was it? The ghost of a person who had died there? Why the mask? Why did it bleed? Why did it have such obvious fascination with sex? And why did it keep trying to communicate, but only in aggression, shows of ownership, and goading playfulness?

Whatever it was, it wanted him angry and naked and raw. That much was clear to him now. It did everything in its power to make him vulnerable from scaring him, to disrobing him, to taunting him. It was like everything it did was tailored to force him into his most base of responses.

And, to his shame, it had worked every time thus far.

Akira scowled at the sensation of his face growing warm in embarrassment, and his fingers clawed into the bright fabric of his jogging pants. It irritated him that his mind decided they were the same brilliant shade of red as the phantom’s gloves.

A sudden gasp from the crowd of students and faculty caused Akira to jerk his head up in confusion just in time to see the volleyball rocket through the air right towards the mousy, dejected boy from his homeroom. Time felt slowed and unreal. He could see Kamoshida in the air, having spiked it, and he could see the shellshocked posture of the boy. He wasn’t going to be able to dodge.

The resounding smack of leather on skin boomed through the gymnasium, dwarfed only by the following sound of his small body collapsing onto the floor in a boneless heap. He did not have to stand or strain his eyes to be able to see that the boy had passed out cold. If the spiked ball hadn’t caused it, his head impacting the ground would have.

Students and a handful of faculty raced over to his prone form, but Akira found his gaze sliding over to Kamoshida almost by instinct.

The man stood behind the mesh of the net, but nothing like remorse touched his face. His features held the exaggerated, villainous quality he remembered from his first conversation with him. His nose and lips and chin were all more cartoonishly long and wide, stretched and pulled into impossible prominence. His eyes were darker still, ravenous voids that stared and stared. Too long, really. Kamoshida stood there like a mannequin, eating up the chaotic display that unfolded around him.

Then, as if waking from a stupor, humanity rushed back into him. He blinked, and his features seemed to melt back into normalcy with the ease of erasing a chalkboard clean. Kamoshida ducked under the net and jogged over to the scene, his face the precise picture of concern.

“Hey, are you all right!?”

It had all been in the space of five seconds, but Akira could not shake the unease that pulsed and writhed through him like sickly poison. His face and his hands felt ice cold and the scent of dust burned in his nose.

No one paid him any mind.


	4. Chapter 4

The match was cancelled after Mishima (he had heard his name many times now in the commotion) had been taken to see the nurse. They were all released back to class, but the atmosphere of the day had shifted on its axis, leaving the school population to find their footing in the only ways they knew how: gossip and pettiness.

Akira walked through the hallway after using the restroom, and the whispers around him grew exponentially with every step. Eyes stared out at him from every conversation like he was the sun that they were just now realizing they had drifted away from.

_“Someone told me he’s killed before…”_

_“He’s killed a few people, right? That dude’s freakin’ terrifying.”_

_“I hear that anyone who makes eye contact with him has to be sent to the hospital…”_

Their words were particularly vicious today as if the tragedy of their fallen classmate had made them all search out a common enemy. Akira wasn’t shocked they had honed back in on him, but he was surprised no whispers were about Kamoshida. Not a single one.

The malicious, hushed words followed him all the way back to his home room, and even in the middle of class he could hear his classmates leaning across the aisles to talk and shoot unsteady daggers in his direction.

It was near the end of the day that the door to the classroom opened and Mishima walked back in. His posture was weak and folded like a marionette with no conductor, and his skin was the color of milk. He sat down in his chair amid a thick, buzzing hornets nest of whispers, but none seemed brave enough to speak to him directly.

Akira watched him through the remainder of class, taking in the bruises and bandages and how impossibly small he was able to contort his frame. A part of him wanted to speak to him after class, reach out to someone so obviously hurting, but when class dismissed he found that he couldn’t move himself towards Mishima at all.

What could he possibly say? It was obvious that Kamoshida was abusing the volleyball team members. He’d passed by enough of them covered in bruises, downtrodden, and exhausted. Mishima’s injuries and demeanor were simply the most obvious. 

In the end, Akira walked past Mishima without offering any sort of gesture of kindness, but when dark eyes glanced up at him in passing, he couldn’t help but let as much of his apology and understanding bleed into his gaze as he could on his way out.

The walk and train ride back to Leblanc felt long and arduous. His head remained thick and muzzy the whole way as if he had never left the balmy heat of that gym. Other people pressed in too close, and every breath felt too hot. When he finally arrived back at the cafe, the scent of coffee and spices rushed through his senses, erasing the fog and allowing him to feel more human once again.

Sojiro did not even grace his presence with a look. His face remained buried in the newspaper, and once again, Akira could not help but wonder what he did with his days. One newspaper could not possibly tide him over for so many hours when customers were rare at best. 

For the second time today, he kept walking past instead of asking questions, taking the stairs up to the attic. Every step flooded him with memories of last night, and his spine was so taut with fear once he reached the landing that he felt stiff and wooden like a tin soldier placed before a battle it could not possibly win.

The room stood still and sunny, and even the other half of the room looked normal. The air did not feel weighted with eyes and devilish intent. No shadows darkened or shifted just out of the corner of his vision. It was simply a normal attic. Akira sighed in relief, stepping forward and then pausing immediately as his eyes landed on his box full of clothes.

He had pulled it out to get dressed that morning and left it out in his hurry to get away from his doppelganger. It still sat where he had left it, but he could...smell something and see the box looked damp. A bag of old rice had broken open on the shelves and spilled inside along with what looked like _coffee_.

The pieces clicked in his mind, and Akira glared and balled his hands into fists at his side. Sojiro had come up to retrieve rice and obviously had a clumsy accident...but the fact that he had not acknowledged him or said a word about it when he had arrived...that he had just _left_ the mess…

His vision burned red with rage and went filmy with tears in an instant. Akira surveyed the destruction of his clothes with his teeth grit so hard his jaw ached. It felt like every item inside was stained and damp. He couldn’t even complain! Sojiro was likely waiting downstairs for any sign of aggression or disrespect for an excuse to kick him out. This was just another silent nail in his coffin lid that sweetly promised nothing but loneliness and slow suffocation.

Face and nose burning, Akira dropped his school bag, digging into the pockets for the very last bits of his yen. With that he started to yank his clothes out and into his arms. Every angry sniffle that left him made him all the more incensed, and he didn’t bother hiding the stomping of his footsteps when he marched downstairs and across the street to the laundromat.

Sojiro never looked up. The newspaper did not even rustle.

With each piece of clothing he put into the washer it felt like a new weight being added to his strained back. His paltry remaining coins were used for detergent and a cycle. The entire process left him feeling scooped out and hollow, forcing him to settle into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs numb and desperately unhappy.

For the next hour Akira angrily retrieved his school bag and worked on his homework in the humid, stuffy confines of the laundromat. His ass hurt and his throat felt strained and painful from the stone of anger that had lodged itself there. 

By the time he finally finished folding his clothes and reentered Leblanc, Sojiro had moved from his stationary place at the bar where he had been working to become a living and breathing newspaper. Instead, he was putting on his stupid hat and turning off the television when Akira entered.

His large, tired looking eyes seemed to take him all in at once, bouncing from his expression to the stack of laundry in his arms before he melted into a look of unfiltered disdain. No remorse. No explanation.

“About time you came back. I was about to close the shop. You may have found yourself locked out,” he reminded him, brushing past him in the tight space, his cologne practically strangling him in his choked up, angry state. “Don’t get complacent.”

With those last words echoing in his head, the door closed behind him, and the loud ‘snick’ of the lock felt more like the squelch of a knife in his back.

His blood hissed and boiled in his veins, and the absolute silence of the cafe did nothing but allow him to hear his frantic pulse in his ears. Akira stomped loudly up the stairs, placing his folded clothes on the now empty shelving near his bed so that Sojiro and his fucking clumsy hands wouldn’t come near them.

Only with his clothes safe did he allow himself to fall to a sit on his bed and clutch at his hair, not even caring when his stupid fake glasses slipped from his head and clattered onto the dusty floor. 

It was a cloudy night and the attic was much darker than normal, oppressive and offering no comfort after his day. From far away, a soft rumble of thunder purred through the air like a physical caress. Strangely, it was the first enjoyable sensation he’d encountered all day, and he slowly eased back upright to strain his ears and face the attic for the first time since his return.

Unlike earlier, the shadows did seem deeper and not quite right. Shapes didn’t match up with objects, and his eyes could not adjust to any of them. Even so, everything stood still and unthreatening, the old wood creaking and groaning softly during his transfixed staring like an old ship at sea.

The comparison was rather apt. The anger simmered in him still, mixing with how unbearably hungry he was, leaving him sea sick and unsteady. He craved kindness and relief like a sailor needed drinkable water, but all around him was absolutely nothing that could save him. Worse, all that he found surrounding him would kill him if he gave in to it.

Even knowing that, Akira found a new want bloomed in his fiery chest and spread through him in feverish tendrils. His thoughts from earlier about his worrying attraction to his own fear crept back in, but they did nothing to stave off the tingle of interest that washed over his body.

His gaze swept over the attic, straining to see any shapes, any signs that the phantom might be there and looking at him. After all, he felt raw and angry and hurt, a bleeding wound that practically screamed for any kind of interaction...just like the phantom wanted. Right?

From the shadows he could make out a pale shape, formless and terrifying purely because it was there. It moved slowly, seeming to melt forward from the darkness, a glint of gold in the bottom of a well that flickered when the moon shined down into the depths.

The pale shape blossomed into the shape of a mask, and Akira could see the faint glitter of the phantom’s eyes from the thick shade. It looked even more starkly like bone in this moment, stirring those same feelings of fear in the pit of his stomach and sending his heart into an almost painful drumbeat against his ribs.

Akira wet his lips and slowly peeled his turtleneck up and off, moving deliberately slowly and doing his best to keep his eyes on the figure that had begun to appear out of fear and interest in equal measure. Perhaps his assumption about what the phantom wanted was correct. It wanted him vulnerable and angry and positively begging for human interaction...even if that interaction made his skin crawl and his fingers go numb from terror. He needed to be _seen_ and wanted and the center of at least this creature’s universe for a moment.

And he was receiving that.

His skin became covered in gooseflesh as the supernatural cold washed over his now bare chest and arms. His fear spiked further, but it tasted sharp and delightful on his tongue. Skittish and lightheaded with his own adrenaline, Akira moved to his feet, hands already beginning to unfasten his fly while staring the phantom down.

“Were you here when he destroyed my clothes?” he spat almost conversationally, a dark little smirk starting to tug at his lips in his moment of snide vitriol. He shoved the plaid pants down his legs, wiggling and jerking until he could free his ankles and stand there by his bed in only his underwear and the spark of indignant rage on his face.

The other being shifted further into his field of vision, red gloves _glowing_ in the dim light. The single bulb still lit up above was weak and doing little more than creating a pitiful pool of diseased light between him and his doppelganger. Dust motes winked like diamonds in the space like a physical barrier between their two worlds, and through those glittering, winking flecks he could see a matching smirk pour across their shared face like blood unfurling in water.

It said nothing, simply walked forward, boots loud and heavy sounding like they belonged to someone twice their size. It unsettled the dust around its feet with every step, until it stood directly under the bare bulb, the overhead lighting throwing its face into stark relief. The mask caused strange shadows, and its eyes were somehow both void and glistening at once.

It wore the same outfit he had seen the time before, black coat with its huge cuffs and the puffed up pants tucked neatly into knee high boots that curled at the toes. It was exactly the sort of outfit Akira would want to wear to Halloween. It called to mind a million hopes and dreams from his childhood, when he wanted nothing more than to solve mysteries in the dead of night and attend balls held in manor homes where he could drink champagne on the balcony. 

His ghost-like stalker looked more comfortable in the outfit of his dreams than he could ever hope to be, blood colored hands sliding free of its pockets like a cardinal startling and flying from a hidden tree branch. The color blared like a beacon, broadcasting their message loud and clear.

_Danger._

The alarm bells going off in his head were practically mood music for how little Akira heeded his own fight or flight instinct in that moment. He did not run. He did not fight. Instead, he took a shaky step backwards to ease down into a sit upon the edge of the mattress. From his much lower vantage point, the monster was far taller than him, larger than life and oozing the sort of confidence that made his blood run as cold as those gloved fingertips.

But if it wanted him vulnerable and afraid, Akira would give it what it wanted. And partly because...it’s what he wanted too. He was so tired of being strong.

Feeling foolish and desperately unsure, he leaned back oh-so-slowly until he was lying down. The position was the same he slept in, and the sheets felt chilly and almost welcoming even amid his panic. His eyes remained wide open lest the monster attack him in the split second it would take to blink. It did not move or react, and for that reason, Akira swallowed audibly in the crushing silence and did the stupidest and very last thing he should; he let his legs spread in a slow and humiliating, but obvious sign of just what he wanted.

His doppelganger, for all that it enjoyed terrorizing him and being as cryptic as possible, did not leave him waiting. 

It moved as fluid and strange as smoke curling in the air, shifting forward and pressing a knee into the lumpy mattress with no sign of a weight depression in the fabric. The lightbulb up above them flickered, crackling and buzzing, screaming out to him to please stop, please think, please run.

The loud shattering of glass made Akira jump, eyes going impossibly wider even as the room plunged into full darkness. Looming above him was the dark shape of the phantom, silhouetted by the light from the window and looking far too large and sinister. Akira couldn’t see its eyes, but he had a feeling it would not have mattered. They would be just as deeply dark and empty as the blackness that now engulfed them.

He could feel the temperature in the room dropping steadily, leaving his lungs feeling tight and crystalline, each breath a jagged reminder that he was alive, but so fragile. His heart leapt in uneven, frantic pulses, and every thump against his chest made him feel terrifyingly human human human.

And above him, the glitter of hidden, everwatching eyes and the unnatural glimmer of slick teeth in nonexistent light spelled out so clearly that he had tempted something far more unknown and dangerous than fire.

As a child he had never been afraid of the dark. Now he knew it was only because he’d had no idea this waited for him inside it.

For all that it did not manifest weight against the mattress, Akira was acutely aware of weight settling over his body easily. The phantom felt cold and _heavy_ , calling to mind visuals of a gargantuan iron anchor plunged into the icy ocean and drifting hazily downward toward rock bottom with the intent to drag him along against his will.

He wanted to protest. He wanted to thrash and punch and kick as his fear threatened to strangle him. What was he doing? Why had he done this? How could he trust this thing not to end him in this moment of curiosity disguised as trust?

But every inch of fight left him at the sensation of ice cold lips pressing against his own. They were shockingly soft, soothing the bite of cold with satin luxury and the faintest hint of breath that tasted as cold and mysterious as stardust.

Akira’s mind melted and darkened just like the attic, spilling over with ink that blotted away every last bit of his common sense. All that remained was this kiss and that trapping weight. The last thing he saw before his eyes closed in pleasure was the sun peaking through the window over the creature’s shoulder and a bare flirtation of lashes against the bone white of the mask.

He moaned and surrendered what little grasp of control he had, lifting his heavy arms from the bed and sliding his fingers through the curls that were both familiar and alien at once. The texture was his own, the same sensation he got every time he ran his hand through his hair in class or stressful situations. It had the same weight and softness that he always experienced when twisting strands in thought. But the phantom’s hair was chilly and almost felt like it was vibrating against his fingertips. Each pass of his fingers was like a crackle of electricity or television static made manifest.

It was absolutely riveting, but he still went completely and rigidly still when the demon opened its mouth and confidently snaked its tongue past his lips. This time his moan came from deep in his chest, primal and confused and hungry.

Akira eagerly twined his tongue with the monster’s, feeling arousal jolt through his entire body like a bolt of lightning. Just the night before he had challenged this being and taunted it with his body only to be scared within an inch of his life when the phantom met his bluff. Tonight was not an act of defiance, but a surrender. He still did not know what it wanted from him, but he could no longer fight the base nature within him that pleaded and begged to taste the threat and ride the adrenaline that this being offered him.

His cock ached where it was trapped within the confines of his last remaining article of clothing. The weight of the ghost bearing down on it, icy and unforgiving, was driving him mad. Already, he could feel the dampness of his interest making the fabric cling to his overly sensitive skin, leaving him a panting mess into the yawning, frozen void of its mouth.

It took all he had to break away from the kiss to catch his breath and stare up at his captor with heated interest. In the dark, he could almost pretend it didn’t look exactly like him. Just a faceless gentleman thief that had come through his window in the night to ravish him and steal his heart.

“Can I take these off?” he asked it, unsure if it would understand or speak back. Thus far, communication had been very hit and miss. Honestly, Akira wasn’t sure he _wanted_ it to talk to him given the nightmare inducing voice of static and creepy layers that he had used before.

Luckily, it did not say anything. A smirk bloomed across its lips, and it eased backwards enough to make room. What he wasn’t prepared for was to feel the cold sensation of gloves against his hips, crimson fingers hooking beneath the band of his underwear and pulling them down his legs. Being bare before this monster was no less intimidating. Akira wanted to shy away from its empty gaze, but miraculously did not try to hide.

Instead, he bravely set his jaw and reached forward towards the front of those stylish pants and began to unbutton them. The fabric whispered beneath his fingers, pliant and soft and somehow sensual all on their own. How did even its clothing hold such sex appeal? He had to remind himself again and again that whatever it was it had chosen to take on _his_ face! He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much.

But, fuck, he really was.

His brain and his heart were blaring so wildly that he was shocked he hadn’t had a heart attack or fainted in pure fear, but his body wanted nothing more than the powerful churning of adrenaline to never, ever stop.

There was no surprise at all when he folded back the fly and reached inside to gently pull out the phantom’s cock to find that it was identical to his own. The familiar length and thickness of it was almost comforting in his hand despite the angle being all wrong to how he would normally experience it. Even here, its skin remained chilled and otherworldly soft, touched by something he could never hope to name or describe.

Just being this close to it had his senses on overload, trying desperately to make sense of the being, to hammer it down into things he could understand but continued to fail at time and time again. It felt like copper smelled. Smelled like rubbing a crystal glass sounded. Tasted like melting icicles felt.

Akira wanted it all. He wanted to understand it. He wanted to wrap his mind around every befuddling, terrifying inch without ever losing the knife’s edge that made his breath catch in his throat in fear.

And what terrified him most of all was that he could. Whatever this entity was, it welcomed his curiosity. It had not shied away from his touch and did not seem in any hurry. It simply stayed there above him, watching him silently behind its mask and exuding its strangely titillating version of menace. 

It had not yet ever moved to hurt him in any way beyond psychologically terrorizing him, and that fact was enough to embolden him. Akira felt his decision solidifying into stone in his chest as he dragged his hands up the silky, freezing material of its vest and along the thick leather of its coat until he could sink them into its hair once again, yanking him down for another kiss.

This time around, he didn’t hold back. Akira sank back into the lumpy mattress, pulling his captor down with him. It was like being buried in snow; cold and heavy and bizarrely comforting for all that it stung, but the cold did nothing to deter his interest. His cock pulsed feverishly hot where it was trapped between them, and he felt no shame when he lifted his legs to lock them greedily around its waist.

A sound rumbled in the phantom’s chest at his display of surrender. It grew and bubbled up through its body, and what spilled past its lips and against his tongue was a deeply pleasant chuckle so sensual that it sent a full body shudder ripping down his spine and curling his toes. It was not human in any way. It called to mind the deep vibrating purr of jungle cats and the tinny blur of audio distortion on a radio. And teeth.

Inexplicably, ribbons and knives came to mind, jogging him right back to the fateful day he had first made the comparison of handcuffs and teeth and ribbon. It felt like providence that he should think of it again now in such a different light. It felt good to have caused it instead of been on the receiving end. Something about it felt _right_.

Akira found himself chuckling as well, lightheaded and euphoric at this discovery. He was flushed with pleasure, power hungry and dying for more of this overly confident feeling. His lips tingled from their kiss, buzzing and silently begging for yet more kisses to drown in. All of it left him overwhelmed and helplessly rutting his hips up for every second that dripped by without touch. Still, the phantom did not move. It happily met him kiss for kiss, but did not move to initiate further. It was a stark contrast from their first encounter when it had ripped his pants down while invisible. Why now was it displaying conscience!? It was infuriating!

Just as he was about to start asking questions, the words from the email jumped into his mind as if planted there.

_Everything must go._

It gave him pause, and after a beat, he looked up at his doppelganger through his lashes. His gaze traced the contour of the mask where he could just make out dark liquid seeping around the lower edge, welling there and threatening to roll down its face like tears.

“I’m not afraid,” he whispered, falling into a helpless smirk. His thumping heart and acid filled veins begged to differ from his declaration, but Akira embraced it as what it truly was; pleasure fueled by adrenaline. “Please.”

It was the right thing to say. The phantom blinked slowly, and its glistening teeth slid eerily into view, sharp and almost canine. Its breath spilled like autumn wind against his face, and leather clad fingers suddenly appeared and wrapped tightly around his cock.

“ _Good,_ ” it replied. Its voice cut through him sharper than any blade, stirring up his fear all over again no matter what lies he told. It was intoxicating and alien, a colony of nightmares hidden in soundwaves, all directed to him. “ _You are almost ready_.”

Ready? Ready for what?

He was not given the chance to consider or ask. The phantom peeled its body back away from his own, giving them both the room that was necessary for it to begin dragging its fist slowly up and down the length of his cock. Pleasure slammed into him with the force of a tidal wave, stealing the breath from his longs in a tight, shocked gasp.

The temperature sent spasms of gooseflesh and trembling lust over every inch of his body, and Akira’s fingers clenched into the sheets involuntarily. The dark shape of the phantom loomed over him, writhing and shifting and staring.

Akira had always known his sexual fantasies veered heavily into exhibitionism territory, and the sheer presences of hundreds and hundreds of eyes on him in this inky shadow filled attic sent jagged spikes of excitement straight between his legs.

A steady stream of _yes yes yes yes_ clamored chaotically against the walls of his mind, and it wasn’t until the pleasure stopped entirely that he was made aware that those words were tumbling past his lips in a needy blur.

The ice cold hand and pressure was gone, leaving him to blink in confusion and look up at the spectre in bewilderment. 

Before he could open his mouth to plead for an explanation, the phantom moved, shifting up higher to its knees and creating an even more intimidating pillar of fear. For a split second, Akira was absolutely certain that all of this had been foreplay to his demise and that he was about to be gutted at his most vulnerable state just like it had wanted all along.

But then frigid fingers grasped his thighs. The lower half of his body lifted like it weighed nothing, and he watched as the monster tugged his hips effortlessly on top of its lap where it was positioned on its knees.

Akira knew what was to come next, but it did not stop the shock he felt and his terrified inhale as the phantom’s cock shoved forward inside of his body.

He expected ripping pain and the heat of blood, but it never came. Instead, he felt filled, stretched and aching in the most all consuming and wonderful way. Shockwaves of pleasure cascaded out from his tailbone to the tips of his fingers and every strand of his hair. Nothing in his entire life had _ever_ felt this good. It was in this drunken, euphoric state that it leaned down to draw him into a kiss, and Akira felt something caged inside of him break free.

His fingers clawed into the jacket, yanking him down all the closer, turning the kiss into something almost feral. Akira winced at the clack of teeth, but plunged his tongue into the cool, sweet cavern of its mouth with a growl. The taste of cold, empty space, dark water, and the bitter undercurrent of dread flooded through him, dragging everything with its current and leaving only his devastating arousal and his fear behind.

The phantom moved then, easily holding up his weight by a single hand against the small of his back, the other pressed into the mattress by his head like a steel stake. The sensation of its whisper cool length sliding slowly out was maddening. His nerve endings screamed, and his body clenched and spasmed as if trying with all of its might to not lose it.

It was as the phantom had pulled almost entirely out that the thought of where he was and what he was doing slammed into him. Akira thought of what it might look like should Sojiro come back in and up the stairs right this moment. What would he see?

Would he see Akira alone, held aloft by an invisible force with his legs spread wide and his cock heavy and flushed against his stomach? Would he see the way his body jolted and swayed, rocked by his unseen lover under the perfect spotlight of the window?

Or would he see a perfect likeness of himself plunging deep inside of him once again and forcing an unhinged moan from his throat?

No matter what the case may be, the fantasy of being caught in this indecent display had Akira aroused out of his mind. Sweat itched along his skin despite his cold partner, and he was positive that he was leaving deep half moons in the leather of its jacket each time he dug his nails in.

Every thrust felt larger, harder, more intense, leaving him crying out and scrabbling for purchase against the seemingly cool and unruffled monster on top of him. It slammed against his prostate again and again without mercy, and Akira could feel wet drops of blood falling against his face and chest where it rolled in thick, dark rivulets down the phantom’s face.

His pleasure climbed and climbed, mixing with the violent churning acid of fear in his gut. From far away he could hear the television downstairs spluttering and changing channels, static and cut off human voices mingling in a horrifying cacophony. Outside the window, the streetlamp blinked and flickered like a candle flame in the wind. Pipes under the floor groaned and hissed, sounding very much like a deep sea creature wrapping tentacles around a soon to be sunken ship. 

Every bit of it was little more than background noise to the ecstasy pounding through his system. Akira had lost his sense of decorum and his ability to stay quiet moments before, leaving him a loud and emphatic mess on the sheets.

It was the sensation of cold leather against his cock that was his breaking point. The phantom wrapping a hand around his pulsing arousal shredded every last bit of his self-control. Orgasm roared through him with the strength of a hurricane, ravaging every inch of him from the inside out. Pleasure rolled like waves along his body, lapping away every bit of his energy and his fear and his common sense, leaving him clean and beautiful as the shore of a sundrenched beach.

Amid all of the hypersensitivity and the bombardment of pleasure, Akira forced his eyes open to see the phantom. Its face was covered in dark blood beneath the mask, creating a gruesome new face that looked less like his own. It did nothing to dampen his euphoria, and he could feel his cock give a weak twitch of want as the monster licked its bloody lips while pulling free of his body.

“Remember what this freedom feels like,” it told him, its voice sounding almost normal for the first time. 

Akira’s brows knit in confusion, but before he could say anything the phantom disappeared. The gnashing sounds of the television, the streetlamp, and the pipes all silenced at once, leaving him in an absolute quiet that felt even less comforting than the noise.

The temperature immediately began to warm, and Akira lay there in shock watching the window slowly lose the fog of frost that had formed during the act. His body thrummed and pulsed sluggishly, recovering from the most intense orgasm of his life amid a new wave of perplexity.

It took him ages to finally get up and go downstairs to use the restroom, and when he looked in the mirror to see his face covered in droplets of blood he felt his unease swirl back into his stomach as if it had never left. The invisible sensation of leather fingertips dragging down his naked back did nothing to relax him.

Was that what freedom was? Giving in to his own wants and desires?

Or giving in to something bigger than him?

\------------------

  
Sleep had been the most restful since his move to Tokyo. The phantom did not make itself known for the rest of the night, giving him the breathing space and tranquility to truly rest for the first time in ages. It gave him the breathing room to think about what he had done, but he felt no better equipped to handle this new status quo in the morning light.

Akira dressed in his newly laundered clothes, keeping a keen eye out to make sure that what he did grab was not coffee stained. The attic did not leer darkly from the corners and no spiders scuttled in the corner of his vision. Downstairs the tv murmured without distortion, and the customary rustle of the newspaper was all disarmingly normal.

The only sign that last night had not been some sort of wet dream-cum-nightmare was the very significant ache that had bloomed between his legs. Every step he took was a reminder that he had very much lost his virginity to a supernatural being the night before. One that looked like him, no less. He supposed it gave new meaning to the phrase ‘go fuck yourself’. 

Downstairs, Sojiro was no more willing to offer explanations or apologies about his clothes than the evening before, but there was a plate of steaming curry and a cup of coffee waiting on the bar. Akira took the bare minimum kindness where he could get it, easing onto the barstool with a wince and filling his empty stomach. Free food was free food. At this low in his life, he would be grateful for it.

After washing the dishes and brushing his teeth, Akira headed out the door. Much as he hated his circumstances he had already grown fond of living here in Tokyo. Even this small neighborhood held charm. He followed the path between the buildings towards the station, sidestepping the working men and women who never seemed to notice his presence at all.

The subway was familiarly packed, but he lucked out in getting a seat and the ability to read on his way to school. He had found an abandoned book in the laundromat the previous night and it was unexpectedly enjoyable and right up his alley; a gentleman thief aboard a ship stealing wealthy people’s jewels. It was whimsical and overdramatic, and reminded him of the phantom’s outfit and those ruby bright gloves and mask. 

He supposed the phantom was a good thief if the treasure had been his virginity or his surrender. Or even just his sense of safety. It had stolen all three from him in the span of a few days, leaving him feeling bereft and unsure of what his future held for him. More and more it felt like he was holding his breath...but for what?

The train car slowed around him, alerting him of the oncoming stop. Akira marked his place in the book and moved to a stand, shuffling out with the rest of the riders and making haste up the stairs to greet the above ground. 

Memories of last night and the ache in his body distracted him easily enough, and when he next looked up it was to realize he was in the final stretch of road up to the school. Ahead of him were many students. Two girls in particular, he vaguely remember having played in the first set during the weird students vs staff volleyball game. They spoke in low voices together, but the tinge of concern there made Akira eavesdrop immediately.

“I can’t believe Suzui-senpai missed such an important meeting. I wonder what happened,” one of the girls whispered, her brows pinched tightly in worry to the point Akira felt himself mirroring it, frowning unseen behind their backs.

The other girl nodded along gravely, clutching more tightly at her bag. “Mr. Kamoshida asked to see her…”

It was the first time he had ever heard that tone about Kamoshida. To hear that anxious and negative inflection gave him both pause and relief. He wasn’t the only one.

“You know, I’ve been hearing rumors about how Mr. Kamoshida and Suzui-senpai stay late…”

“She always shows up to meetings though. It’s weird she wasn’t at the one yesterday…”

The girls lowered their voices yet further, and he was unable to hear anything more, but it was enough. He remembered that name from the game. The girl with the ponytail that had sat near Ann in the gymnasium. That was Suzui Shiho. 

He could remember her wrapped knee and her hunched shoulders. She had looked exhausted and beaten down and completely fucking miserable. It was easy to remember faces like hers and Mishima when they so terribly mirrored his own emotions.

It sounded very much like Kamoshida was doing more than just beating them. Suzui didn’t appear to hold the bruises and scratches like Mishima...but she didn’t have to. Kamoshida treated the entire school as if he was the king over a community of serfs. And concubines it would seem. He’d heard so many snide rumors about girls servicing Kamoshida or just being called into his office for untoward reasons. It was obviously such a prevalent thing that he had already heard it many times in his very, very short time here.

Anger boiled in his stomach, roiling and bubbling and demanding action and retribution, anything to quell the heat of it. Strangely, Akira wished he had the chill of the phantom. He could just imagine an icy palm pressing to his hot face in that moment.

What could he do, though? Confronting Kamoshida would mean expulsion and an end to this probation for real bars. He was a nobody. He was worse than a nobody...he was a nobody with everything to lose.

He reached the steps to the school with that thought resounding in his head. The whispers of his peers began on cue. Hateful, disparaging comments followed him all the way to his homeroom all while his thoughts circled back so easily, repeating the same unhappy musings from the night before.

Was freedom giving in to something bigger than you?

  
\----------------

The day remained overcast to the point that every glance out the window would inspire a short second of panic that it was evening followed by verifying the time on his phone that it was, in fact, still mid-afternoon.

The weather seemed to affect the entire school, his classmates dull and glassy eyed where they sat in their desks and listened to Mr. Ushimaru’s lecture. Akira had a strange fondness for the man after he had called on him the other day. The worst he had doled on him was calling him ‘new kid’ which was very far down the list of worst things he had endured thus far.

“...and the Supreme Court is judiciary,” Mr. Ushimaru droned on, in his element and not deterred by the lack of passion in the room in the least bit. “The division of power provides checks and balances, which ensures no one branch becomes unstoppable."

Akira listened half-heartedly, his mind alive with comparisons of power and balances and unstoppable forces in his own life. There was nothing protecting him from being steamrolled by outside powers. It was fitting that this lesson was about how Japan took care of things in its government, and how poorly it had looked after him.

He was considering pulling out his new book on the off chance his teacher was far too engrossed to notice or care when suddenly a student near the door shot up to his feet. 

"Hey...What's that...!?" the student asked, eyes wide and looking out the window by the door at something that Akira could not see.

The teacher looked immediately irritated, scowling and and pointing at the offender who had dared to suddenly disrupt his speech. "Enough! This is a classroom!"

"Wait…” another student spoke up, this time a girl who was staring with the same wide eyes and panicked expression as the first boy. “She's going to jump...!"

Those words sent a spasm of real fear through Akira, and his fingers clenched tightly into the plaid fabric on his legs. Someone was on the roof? They were going to jump?

The last person he expected jerked up to their feet. He looked up and over in surprise to see Mishima now standing and looking white as a sheet beneath the bruises and bandages. He looked _ill_ , his hands trembling on his desk like wounded insects. “Suzui…?!”

That name...it was the girl the other volleyball players were discussing this morning. She had apparently missed a meeting and possibly because of Kamoshida. It was her that was on the roof? Why?

It was at Suzui’s name that the blond, pigtailed girl who sat in front of him flashed up to a stand as well, looking like a tiger ready to pounce. “Shiho…?”

Mr. Ushimaru was apoplectic by this point, slamming his book on his desk and demanding them all to sit, forbidding anyone from leaving the room. Unfortunately, his demands fell on deaf ears as Akira watched Ann go running out of the room amid the teacher’s cry of outage.

He sat in his chair feeling useless and unsure, but a look towards Mishima started to hammer out his feelings quite well. Shiho was being victimized by Kamoshida. He could think of no other explanation, and obviously something must have happened to trigger this. 

If he ran after Ann and towards Suzui he could face repercussions. Mr. Ushimaru could even expel him if he was so inclined. But the thought of doing nothing, of sitting in this desk and behaving while the world went to hell around him...that sounded worse.

He would not give in to what Kamoshida wanted. He would not be guilty of letting his own circumstances ruin someone else’s life. He was on his feet before he could even register the movement, flying out of the room and into the hallway with his teacher yelling at his back.

The halls were packed with students already, crowding every window and door, but ahead of him he could see Ann at one of them, her dainty hands pressed to the window sill and her knuckles bleeding white with how tight her grip was.

He could see just over her shoulder the tiny figure perched up high on one of the rooftops. He recognized the ponytail on sight as the girl from the gymnasium. Suzui looked so impossibly small there, her body oddly relaxed despite the danger she was in. He could not help but compare her to a baby bird perched precariously on the edge of its nest, wobbling and frail.

And in a blink, Suzui tipped forward with all of the fanfare of a glass being knocked off a table. He watched her form plummet, not in slow motion, but so fast it didn’t feel real at all. The surge of gasps in the hallway added an even more macabre lurch to the whole display.

Ann took a shuddering step back from the window, her hands going up to cover her mouth in utter shock. “No...why…?!”

Akira wanted to reach out to her, to offer something, but he knew that anything coming from him would feel insulting at best. They were not friends, and comfort from the resident ‘murderer’ would be highly unwelcome.

“Shiho…!”

He jumped in surprise as Ann shot past him, sprinting down the hallway. It did not take many guesses to figure out that she was trying to get out to her friend’s prone form. Akira didn’t hesitate, running after her. He was met with crowd after crowd at every exit, but eventually he made his way outside.

The dark of the sky was overpowering, and the air was thick to the point of choking with humidity. Students were crammed all across the unnaturally vibrant green of the grass, but Akira elbowed his way through until he caught sight of the bright blond hair of Ann once again.

There in front of the crowd was a stretcher with Suzui covered in a blanket. Her shape rose and fell with breaths at the very least, and Akira arrived in time to see Ann volunteer to ride in the ambulance with her before falling to her knees by her friend.

Suzui whispered to her, quietly speaking into Ann’s lowered ear. He could not hear anything being said, but Ann’s expression told a story of pain and upset. Until she jerked back, pale eyes gone wide with shock and an undercurrent of pure anger and disgust.

“...Kamoshida!?”

Paramedics bustled the girls up into the waiting ambulance, and teachers began to herd students away from the scene. Akira stood rooted like a tree even as fat, heavy raindrops began to fall, splattering against the top of his head and his nose.

Kamoshida drove Suzui to throw herself off of a building. Mishima was a shell of a person covered in physical signs of abuse that were invisible to adult eyes. The principal and Kawakami did nothing and refused to see anything. Fellow teachers high fived him, students looked up to him, and no one else seemed to see the ugliness that flooded from his every pore in those moments Akira had seen his real face.

Students were assembled back to their classrooms, buzzing and talking and not even putting up a front that regular classes would be able to continue as normal. It took some time of deliberation from the staff, but at last they were released early. 

The student body left in a slow meandering tidal wave of gossip and tears. Akira was helpless and windswept amid it, but he could hear some of the terrible things they were saying. They said they heard she was in a coma. That she probably wouldn’t make it. 

His feet moved him of their own accord, guiding him gently through the streets and the subway while his mind fired back and forth with thoughts about Kamoshida, Suzui, Mishima...and himself. 

They had failed Suzui and Mishima, and they had failed him. No matter how well any of them behaved and what efforts were made, their lives remained broken and painful. The adults were _hurting_ them, systematically and without remorse, for seemingly no reason beyond their ego and enjoyment.

When Akira finally looked up it was to realize he was standing in front of Leblanc, the sign cheerfully letting him know the cafe was open. He felt dead inside, scooped out and raw, left in the sun to dry out. Every breath was thick with damp, hot air and the dark clouds overhead rumbled threateningly with the promise of more rain.

He let himself inside with a soft jingle of bells, met with the too cool sensation of air conditioning on his damp skin and the powerful scent of coffee and spices. It did nothing to warm him, and seeing Sojiro there hidden behind his newspaper as always set his teeth on edge in an instant.

Someone might be dying and Sojiro was pretending to read his paper like always, the tv set to some sort of mindless stockbroker discussion. He’s not sure how long he stood there, vaguely aware he was dripping onto the floor and staring vacantly into space, but it was the rattle of paper and a heavy sigh that finally drew his gaze over.

Sojiro looked irritated. Every wrinkle in his face pulled and contorted to define his mood, creating ugly creases and unkind furrows. Even his beard looked more pointed and sharp than usual. The older man checked the time on his phone, and somehow that agitation on his face doubled, making him look like a sculptor carved of gnarled wood and spite.

Akira could not help but wonder if every inch of his tongue and the roof of his mouth was covered in splinters.

“Why the hell are you here? It’s not even two yet,” he spat, slapping the paper down on the counter with such a loud smack that Akira jumped and hunched his shoulders as if expecting to be hit. “Are you skipping school?”

He opened his mouth to reply, but Sojiro was quicker, getting to his feet from his dozy recline and letting his stool slap hard up against the counter. “What did I tell you about the consequences? You think you can just do whatever you want? You’re on probation! I have half a mind to call up your probation officer and tell them where you are right at this moment.”

Shame bit at his stomach to realize that his eyes were burning very tellingly, his vision blurring a bit and a stone lodging in his throat. Akira curled his hands into fists at his sides and did his best to breathe in and breathe out even while the taste of copper swarmed his mouth.

“They released school early,” he hissed, staring down at the floor and hating that he was.

Sojiro snorted and grabbed his paper, folding it and refolding it, crinkling and rustling and sounding so loud it hurt Akira’s ears. 

“Sure they did, kid. It’s on your head. You’ll be out by tomorrow I wager. Until then...go get changed and get back down here. You may be skipping school, but you’re not free to do whatever you want. You have to earn your place here, and I’ve got a sink full of dishes.” 

His chest _burned_. He had never thought that feelings could _hurt_ like this. Indignation scalded like a flamethrower in his lungs, and disgust poured bile directly into his veins. His nails drew blood from his palms and a thousand daggers of ice lodged into his spine one after the other until he was standing as straight and tall as he possibly could.

Despite it all, Akira calmly walked past him and ducked into the bathroom, falling against the closed door while his chest rose and fell with such heavy, panicked and angry breaths that he sounded like he was trying to breathe fire.

Every particle of his entire screamed and howled to lash out. A girl was _dying_. A boy was losing himself. _He_ was doing nothing. He was cowering in a bathroom while the world whipped him again and again and smiled.

Akira’s eyes slammed open, and there was not an ounce of surprise in him to see the phantom standing before him. He looked exactly as he had when he disappeared the night before. Its mask was settled over its eyes, but everything below it was covered in bright crimson blood, slick and obviously fresh.

The light above the mirror flickered and buzzed, throwing them into a strobe light effect, but for the first time since he entered that attic… Akira was not afraid. There was no room for fear in him at this moment.

His look-alike smirked, and out of thin air a dagger appeared in one crimson hand. The blade was so silver it hurt his eyes to look at when light bounced off of it. The sound it made as it moved through the air belied just how sharp it was. Akira was sure it would cut straight through his body as easily as it would cut through butter.

The phantom didn’t stab him, however, only playfully tossed it into the air and caught it again and again, blood flowing from beneath that mask more and more until it was staining his neck and the soft, silky shirt that it wore.

Only then did the fear start to settle back into his belly like a snake, writhing and dragging loving scales through his insides where it had made such a comfortable home.

The bloodied being took a step forward and then another until the chill of its body could be felt against his skin, and the coppery taste of blood and the scent of fresh snow filled his nose. 

“You’re ready,” it crooned, slick, bloody teeth sliding into view, and its dark eyes sparkled from within the eyeholes of the mask looking very much like they were pits filled to brim with nothing but pure pride.

He wanted to ask what it was he was ready for. He wanted to ask why it had a knife. He wanted to ask for the millionth time what it wanted.

Akira was not given the chance for any of it. The phantom grinned and took a single step backwards, and he was forced to watch in shaken bewilderment as it lifted its red hands and reached for the wingtipped edges of the mask. 

The expectation was that he would remove it and Akira would see his own face staring back at him fully for the first time, but his insides curdled and putrefied in a second to hear the squelching, horrific ripping sound that filled the tiny bathroom.

His gag reflex trembled, and he watched the monster pulling at the mask with force enough that he was positive that it was ripping off skin. Every inch it freed left fresh blood gushing down to splatter on the floor and down its chest. Rivulets of red slid down its forearms and into the massive coat sleeves. 

Through it all, it never made a sound of pain, only continued to pull and rip and peel at the mask until at long last it yanked it free with a loud and disgusting sound that would haunt Akira’s dreams for the rest of his life.

The face that now stared back was entirely red, but thankfully not nearly as gruesome as he anticipated. Its eyes stared him down from the bloody mess of his own face that still held an absolutely gleeful smirk.

Only then did Akira realize he was _shaking_ , pressed up against the sink in absolute panic, blood splattering his school uniform and his hands trembling and outstretched to the door, but unable to take that step towards it.

Even after watching the thing that had terrorized him rip off what he assumed was its _actual_ face...nothing on earth could have prepared him for what happened next. The phantom stepped forward once again, dagger glinting in the still flickering light above the mirror, and the hand still holding the mask lifted.

Akira was sure it was about to put it right back on like some sort of hideous magic trick, but the next moment freezing, fleshy wetness pressed to his face. His mind went utterly white with numb, razorblade filled shock as he realized what was now resting against cheekbones and brows.

His breath started to come faster and faster and faster, leaving him lightheaded and drunk, blood pooling and slithering down his cheeks as he stared at the phantom through the eyeholes of the mask.

His double leaned in, pressing its soft lips against his own. Tears rushed past his lashes in a waterfall of scalding terror, mingling with all of the blood. It was everywhere. The kiss tasted like pennies and nightmares and a million miles worth of warped, curled ribbons.

When the phantom finally pulled away, its face was already shifting, the blood seeming to ebb away slowly enough his naked eyes couldn’t catch it. He could feel the same happening to him. The slickness and fleshiness of the mask on his face was overpowering in how much it made him want to vomit and scream, but he was somehow unable to do either.  
  
The monster seemed to know this too, reaching down for his hand and slipping the dagger into it with such a note of finality and joy that fear felt shallow in that moment. He felt something deeper and far, far more primal.

There was an unspoken intent and answer to all of his questions in that one act.

Akira had done many things in his life that scared him. He went across monkey bars that were wet from rain. He launched himself from swings high in the air. He jumped from buildings and broke into the school in the dead of night. 

He played with knives. He put himself into fights that didn’t involve him. He relished when people were watching.

Fear was an abstract concept to him. It was a thing; an object. And for Akira, it had always been an object of desire, something he flirted with shamelessly.

And as the phantom’s smirk grew deeper and full of what he could only describe as fondness, Akira had to admit to himself that it had flirted back.

Icy lips pressed to his own once again, sending soft shockwaves through his reeling and broken mind. They offered a promise. They begged for trust in exchange for a life free of knives at his back.

They parted slowly, and when Akira opened his eyes he could feel the leather against his own hands and what felt like icy flames blooming out from his pounding heart. He found that he could finally move, reaching towards the handle while the phantom smirked and leaned back against the wall. Through the door, he could hear the old television ad blare.

_"You'll be ready to take back the night!”_


End file.
